I'm not sure what's wrong, I just know it never asks me to
initialize
a network connection unless I specify "askmethod", then it does it in
the non-graphical part of the setup.
I just pulled the x86 iso down (only had x64) and whipped up a vm in esxi
w/ an emulated E1000 nic and it asked me to initialize the nic once I hit
the gui before the package selection step.
What kind of nic do you have? Maybe a bug wrt your hardware only?
jlc