I'm going to mess around with biome permissions, see if I can get things to work better. I think the main issue is access to farmland. It might be an idea to limit lions and zebras to tropical areas, but that's going to hinder civs interacting. It's tricky.
For wild griffs and manticores, that's a perfectly good idea. I've been thinking there should be animal lions, zebras and buffalo, too, to fit the general idea of ponies not being the chosen kind. 'Course, that implies we also need evil and cave zebras, lions and buffalo, but I think that's taking it a little too far, lions and buffalo aren't adapted for cave dwelling at all and things are already too crowded. Maybe cave zebras could be fun, though, I'll look into African mythologies and animals and see if I can find some appropriate creatures to base them off.
FYI, Nidokoenig, I did some experimenting on [SOFT] and [HARD] tags, and found they seem to have no relation to the decay of clothing. Alternately, immigrant clothing is different than manufactured clothing and hardcoded somewhere. I only tested with their original clothing, things assigned as a uniform may behave differently.
Huh, I was just going off what the wiki said, but I just checked and my starting seven all have tattered metal umbrella hats, and some of the guys in my second wave, too. Weird.