Glad to hear you like the game. There's isn't a default minimum number of player required to start. You can turn off the waiting for players time by using the config files. Look at the wiki for details on server setup and settings. I haven't heard of the game getting stuck at 4 seconds before. There maybe other who have experienced it before, tho. Try turning the waiting time to 0 and see if that solves it. If it continues to be an issue, post the log files.