Newbies Q: Which Mods?

[Nitram Draw]

Definately try the game as designed first. You may find you don't need anything else to have fun.
Once you are comfortable with the game you may want to slowly modify settings that don't feel right to you. This is fairly easy to do, usually just changing a nuber or value.
Most of what I find great about the mods are the improved AI files and the new shipsets. The new techs are good but I haven't used all the available ones yet so I haven't needed to add more.