There are a few ways to try to get around hippos. The first is to avoid their areas if possible. If you can't, such as in a marsh with much needed reeds, over produce the walkers (reed gatherers in this instance) so you can take some casualities. The third, if towers are available, is to build three manned towers near their spawning ground if possible. The tower guards will keep them under control. I've had limited success with walls and hippos, although they do work nicely to steer immigrants away from the hippos or crocs.
The cart pusher phenom you've seen may or may not be a glitch. The game is probably just trying to do what you've asked it to. I've seen it happen when I set the structure to get an item. For example, you set an SY to get pottery. The game waits a couple of beats and then pops out a cart pusher looking for pottery. If there isn't any pottery available (none in SY's or others set to get also), the pusher has no where to go and disappears. But the SY is set to get pottery so a few beats later the cart pusher pops out again. I haven't tested it, but I'm pretty sure this will happen until it finds a source of pottery available for pick up.
Distributing food to everyone can be difficult on spread out maps. With flood plain farming, over producing is usually enough to solve the problem since cart pushers have all year to wheel their carts from granary to granary delivering food. A back up to this is to have a granary near the source set to accept and the other granaries set to get. Not only will the farm cart pushers deliver the overflow to your other granaries, but the get ones will send cart pushers to the first granary that should be filled to the brim already by the farm cart pushers. It also seems to take a few farm cycles before the bazaar workers can distribute food to everyone in the block.
As for straw, you only need that for brick making and cattle ranches. The best thing is to keep them located in one area and not spread out over the map. Having one or two SY's set to accept straw and limiting it to 1/4 or 1/2 the yard will keep it spread out.
Good luck with On. Since Iunet seems to be a no win, I may have to play On again.
Jimaaten
"May musicians compose songs to you and your name be carved on every public space."
[This message has been edited by JimMRooney (edited 03-19-2000).]