I think I found out why 52,104

[bluetemplar]

It's the closest even tile number to 5600.
5600 is what you get when you want to find how much tiles you need for each of the 7 players if you want to play with the same number of tiles per player as it would be on a standart map (40,80) with 4 players.
40*80=3200
3200*7/4=5600
52*104=5408
There must be a reason why they didn't choose 53,106 which is the closest to 5600...

I think that they were used to play a 4 players PBEMs and wanted to replicate it in SP for tests or maybe add AIs to PBEMs while keeping the same distance...

I remember someone said that was the best size when both Builder & Momentum players were present... I'm not so sure about that now...
But maybe it's just a coincidence?

[Senethro]

Heh, its because its the smallest possible map that has a 7 base bureaucracy limit.

The builder/momentum split is a tricky one. On very small maps momentum players can actually have incredible trouble assaulting someone like the University who can have crawlers and laser rovers before they've got their act together. Similarly, the Believers can be bulldozed by 2125.

Large maps certainly favour the Spartans/Gaians at least. Both of these factions are suited to pod gathering by unit snowballing. (Spartan rovers, Gaian native life) Sparta over-relies on insta-build pods to get its infrastructure in place, to be honest.
Large maps have more pods so being the first to naval units is also a bonus.

[Qwerty88]

I thought the limit was 4 or 5 (16x16)

[bluetemplar]

Ok, then why 7?
Why not 6 (standart map) or 8?
I like 6 because all bases fits in the 800*600 screen then...
EDIT: (In the F4 screen)

[binTravkin]

Because, if you look at the sizes, there's quite a gap between what is huge and what is large, so..

[bluetemplar]

IMHO they made the Huge Map as the largest while being very "stable" map size : 64, 128

If un understand correctly, 52,104 is also a "correction" for the large map (44, 90), for it having the b-drone limit of 7?
why not 48,96 who also has it?
BTW the other minimum (& no odd numbers) sizes are:
1: 8, 16
2: 14, 28
3: 20, 40
4: 28, 56
just a bit more than tiny planet (24, 48)
5: 34, 68
only a bit more than small planet (32, 64)
A shame that you can't add small planet bonuses, or is it not hardcoded and depends on the size order in alphax.txt like for starting units?
8: 54,108
9: 60,120
10: 68,136
11: 74,148
12: 80,160

[Chaos Theory]

A game with altered row widths ("small planet bonuses") can be set up by starting a game with alterations to alphax.txt. However, row widths not multiples of 10 interact poorly with rounding and non-zero industry/growth ratings.