That is good advice, you also don't want to set habitable planets, number of planets andnumber of stars to anything less than common. You can also set anomalies and asteroids to abundant.

If you really want an easy time, manually pick yourself peaceful AIs as opponents (the good races are usually peaceful).

This is the advice I always give when asked about settings for beginners, and it pretty much applies to any game:

Play with the default settings and learn the implications of all the variables first, so you can make educated decisions about things rather than solicitng peoples preferences...which are many and varied with no one being more or less "right".

Changing the map settings will make for completey different games which much of the strategy discussed on the boards may or may not apply to. A single game with the default settings will you you a good enough idea of things you would like to change for subsequent games.