I was having the exact same problem. It would load the SP test but when I tried Player vs CPU, it would sit on Universe and then boot me out. Reinstalled everything, no change. I was getting frustrated. Then I read this thread and had an idea: I made sure that all of the computers were set to Rebellion, Empire, or Yuuzhan Vong, instead of random. I tried it again, and it hung on universe even longer than normal. I pretty much lost all hope at that point. And then, all of the sudden it continued loading and everything worked fine! I suggest you try this.