I've seen this too.  It's got to be connection related because it happened once when someone else on a LAN with me was starting up Demigod too.

We both started the game up and went to log in, both of our games hung after the login prompt.  After 2-3 minutes suddenly they both SIMULTANEOUSLY went through.

It's not entirely the game, it's server side, somewhere.  Hanging the game = not cool.

I've had similar experiences, primarily when trying to run LAN games.

UI that locks up while waiting for a response from a server is mega fail.  Give us an indication that it's connecting, give us the ability to cancel the connection, do it in a separate thread from the UI interaction.

I strongly suspect that it's related to impulse community stuff, possibly even checking that you're registered to play the game, but given that I might be playing offline or on a disconnected LAN and given that you're going to let me play anyway, you shouldn't make me wait for over a minute if the response is lost or a connection cannot be established.

Same problem here, during certain hours. Once after i have clicked "internet", usually less than a minute but sometimes more, then again when i click "logon" at my user id page, then another time when i click pantheon. like 1-2 minutes, until it proceeds. like it waits for a server response on these menus? yeah thats pretty sick. not slick anyhow.

The database server has been sporadically misbehaving the past couple of days, so that's the likely cause. I think we've got that issue sorted though so it should be past.