Carcassonne is a great beginner game! And it meets a lot of your requirements as well! The board is built as you play and lends to different strategies each game. It has loads of expansions if you decide you like it, but I recommend sticking with the base game + rivers to start.

Aside from that, I recommend for beginners who want to get a better overall board game experience to check out games that are known for doing 1 game mechanic really well to help introduce the new concept and expand your boardgame genre experiences without overcomplicating things. Once you've gotten some of those down, it's much easier to dive into bigger, more complicated games that use multiple game mechanics. You'll be able to sit down and recognize each mechanic as you learn!

If you ever get to that point, I HIGHLY recommend Eclipse. It's one of my favorite games that also fits your criteria and is highly rewarding. Downsides are that it has more game mechanics to learn, it takes a while to setup, and you may need to watch a video to play it the first time. Once you've played it, it's easy to remember and you can definitely get through games in 2 hours.

I hope this helps and I hope you enjoy Carcassonne if you end up trying it out!

Some other classics I love that I haven't seen recommended yet:

• Power Grid
• Ticket to Ride
• Puerto Rico
• Agricola
• Viticulture

I agree with pretty much everyone else too! There are a ton of great boardgames to explore and starting with Catan and a regular group is a great place to be in.

Wingspan! Easy to learn, difficult to master. And the theme makes it approachable for non-gamers too. Highly recommend!