What is the recommended difficulty setting for the current version of this mod?

I would like to have a game with a cappable, but not OP AI, as me playing FED. Some fresh posts suggest that the AI in the recent verisons are quite good, so setting the dif to Admiral or Grand Admiral may not be a good choice.


Another question, the slower research option at the start of the game is universal among all the empires or it only affects the player?
In the previous version of this mod, I ran trough the research tree damn fast even with a medicore empire. In my last game, I seen some ship classes that became obsolote even before I had the alloys to build at least one of them.