You mean something like this?
http://game.dom3minions.com/MakeGame.htm
If you check my status thread you will see that I have been drawn out by a nasty email. Since my server crash seems to have resurrected this subject, you people might want to check back thru the previous conversations about this. I might mention that Ive been running internet servers since internet was born and this is a common situation.
Its not the hardware. Any old computer in your closet because it wont run the latest windows games can be more of a server than your ISP is giving you access to.
Its not the software. Dominions 3 is native to Linux and definetly runs best that way. Linux is free. Adding webserver, email server, ftp support, etc is all free. Even forums, IRC, chats, and live voice chats could be added. Dominions itself runs very efficiently and communicates even more efficiently.
Its not even the support. Altho no matter how much you automate it there is still a fair amount of support due to users. Admin by telecommute is fairly cheap.
The scarey math is in turnover. Even blitz games like I run of 2-4 players on small maps can fill up quick and can take a month of play time. How many of those should a server handle in a month? What about mid-sized games of 10 players on a map of 500 provinces? Some of the mods which can add to load? What about era games with 20 players on 1000 provinces? mega games of over 60 players on 1500 provinces? What rules would there be to insure that everyone doesnt create their own mega-game to play against all AIs? If you ran Dom3 on default and tried to keep 10 games open for signup at a time, and let them all run until the players decided they were done (and hope they tell you when to take it down) then it can add up fairly quick.
If you check the conversations in the past you will see many things including my recommendations, excellent work by many people, and Tim Brooks responses. That would be a good place to start if you want to bring all this up again. Do a search on MakeGame and it will show you various conversations on the subject. Particularly the one called
Any plans for an "official" hosting server? 
Re: Shrapnel game server
Threaded Mode