This did the trick! Before, I was using the newest version as it had the "This is a HARDFORK build" displayed. I did discover that if I ran it for a long time (over an hour) that I finally got 1 clearnet connection. After a few minutes with your release, I quickly have 13 I2P connections. For whatever reason I wasn't able to get I2P connections with my earlier setup. (I thought it was setup correctly for I2P but the convenient zipped folder at github.com is clearly setup better. A long time ago my setup was able to connect through I2P but that had stopped working.)
I double-checked anoncoin.net and they don't point people to the GitHub URL. Instead they point them to
https://anoncoin.net/downloads/0.9.6.11/"if you have done this, then there are 2 error sources left
1. software firewall / windows firewall
2. you router/nat firewall"
Yeah, I was worried about that but didn't find anything in such firewalls.