The last time I had played CivII over the internet was over a year ago.
I tried to do matchmaking today and found out that I didnt have the latest patch. While it was downloading I read up on it , and I found a little section about map editor problems that said I needed to change labels.txt line 16 from 876 to 873.
So I went to go do this and found a couple of wierd things:
1. I found a labels.bak in my directory
2. I found that line 16 already said '873'
This reminded me of something, and I went back to my old email archives to make sure.
I found this response from microprose support that made me laugh.

We have just discovered a work around for the map editor crash that you can
try. In the Civ2 Gold folder there is a file called LABELS.TXT. By
changing the line 877 to 873 in this file the map editor seems to work...to
do this:
1. Use the Find files or folders function in the Start menu to search for
LABELS.TXT.
2. RIGHT click on the LABELS.TXT file that is in the Civ2 Gold folder and
UNcheck Read Only.
3. Click Apply then Okay.
4. Double click LABELS.TXT to open it in the notepad and look for the line
has the number 877 alone on it.
5. Change this number to 873 and then Save (not Save As) the file and you
should be able to run the map editor.
I you are still having problems, please email me.
Jonathan
MicroProse TechSupport

In response to:

this is with regard to an apparent bug in the civ II MPGE ver 1.1 upgrade.
The Civ2Map.exe program doesnt seem to be able to work with the new
labels.txt
file that came in the upgrade. if the number of labels is set at more than
873, the map editor crashes. the new labels.txt file has 877. This seems to
work with the new civ2.exe that comes with upgrade, just not with the old
Civ2Map.exe file.
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