Here are some thoughts/suggestions I have after playing:

Games tend to be one sided once one player has sufficient production capacity, so the player that
grabs the most planets the fastest will almost always win by a landslide.

One tweak to balance this is to cap the production limit on each planet, to something like 3x
the turn production.  Once a planet has at least that many ships it does not produce any more
until those ships move away.  This might be worked around by always keeping one's ships in
motion, but at least that leaves an opening for an enemy fleet to jump in and take over a
planet.

Another similar tweak is to modify the production rate of a given planet based on the total
number of planets a player controls.  The idea is that larger empires are less efficient.  The
closer to 100% of the universe that a player controls the less each planet they control
produces, maybe on a non-linear scale with an absolute minimum of 1.

These two tweaks would have to be play tested to ensure they don't cause stalemates,
but once the levels are adjusted the game play will be more balanced with a larger sweet
spot for anyone to win.

Just thought I'd try again, and now the error message reads:

   Invalid host ::ffff:98.203.212.119 or port 7465

Very odd that the message changed, because I didn't change anything on my system.

This problems appears to be unrelated and unaffected to any changes to my
system.  I upgraded to SP3 just recently and it also had zero affect.  The
problem appeared before I did the upgrade and still persists.

The message is most likely coming from the a DNS lookup call or some other
network call that requires a host and port number.   Other code I find on the
web looks to see if the host name is null or contains blanks and checks the
port number range.  My hostname is a single word, no blanks, and my IP
address is 192.168.0.170 because I'm behind a router.  None of those things
have changed.

Are there any URL or Host/Port lookups in the code to a server on the
internet?   If so that call may be the one that is failing.

Windows XP SP3

I took a screen capture, but I don't know how to post it.

The precise error message is in a little dialog box in the
center of the screen:

         Network error
      Invalid host or port.

               OK

Most likely this error is coming from an external package that
is being called.  Trouble is I don't know what host or port it
is referring to that is invalid.

Changing the port number in the previous screen has no
effect.  Same error.

When attempting to create a multiplayer internet game I get the following error message
after the game is created, in the screen where the details of the game are specified and
the game is started:

   Network Error
   Invalid host or port

This used to work, and I don't think I changed anything on my system.  I tried messing
with my Firewall, but to no avail.  My router is set up for the standard port number: 7465
to forward it on to my computer.

Any idea why I'm getting this error?  It is preventing anyone from joining my game.