Quick update. There is some very strange network behavior with the game. What's not so strange is the total traffic up from the client to the server appears to be affected by the amount of construction nearby.

In a decently large base (pallisade, tower, 2 story 6x4 house) my client generates 30 to 60KB/s traffic up and averages around 50KB/s.

Far away from any bases my client generates 10 to 40KB/s with a steady state around 30KB/s.

For people with DSL that upload rate can be greater than they can handle. Once that happens it appears a the second problem kicks in. The server appears to have a action queuing system and if one player is failing to send updates then everything just halts for the other players.

This is particularly obvious when a player is hosting and still lags due to some other player.