I closed the Bosphorus Strait (grid location 64,74) with a woodland terrain (with a road over the top of it). I then also changed the Diplomacy tech to allow MPP, and the Nation-State tech to allow military alliances (reversing how it is normally).
And I have tried it with the same biq name. The game loads it up to the 'Configuring Scenario' stage and then simply freezes up using 50% of my cpu, and never moves beyond that stage. I know its this biq; I don't have problems with any other system or program acting like this, and I can open and play other scenarios just fine (including non-altered MEM).