1) -AI is good. AI holds up well when compared to Galciv...which is a big testament to the creators(Galciv has phenomenal AI)
    -Learning curve is surprisingly lower than say Civ4. UI is absolute brilliant and the game doesnt punish you if you        dont know certain things...
    -Difficulty is scalable as in you can make it easy or you can make it really challenging. But i warn you for a new player even easy can be a challenge. The more AI there is in the map the more challengin it will be too...for some AI dynamic reasons which is too much for me to elaborate.

2)The map is randomly generated and the map is also fixed What i mean to say is that you can randomly generate a map or you can choose to play in a large numbers a premade maps shipped with the game(from varying size...good variety of map). Heck if that not enough you can make you own map! I've seen some insanely huge maps(user made) with some 160 stars!!! something like 5 galaxies!!!