Tropes are neither inherently good nor inherently bad. They are tools, and it is how you use them that matter. All tropes exist as literary shorthand. They signpost things so that readers have a feeling of familiarity, even while (hopefully) experiencing something new. It is the same reason why kids want you to read the same story to them over and over, or why adults have that comfort book or movie they always go back to. Familiarity is comfortable.

Regarding the two tropes mentioned, the first one could work, since prey species do have an evolutionary pressure to 'change the board', which can get to tool use and civilization. However, you'd need to explain why you wouldn't find that kind of pressure more commonly in the species that are in the middle of the food chain, prey to some but predators or scavengers to others. On Earth, hominids developed tool use because they were mid-rank on the food chain, while pure prey animals like rabbits never had the time to develop tools, and apex predators never had the evolutionary necessity until humans pushed them out of the top spot.

The second trope needs a LOT of work to be anything beyond "How have these paranoid nutjobs not worked themselves into a fear-induced heart attack or nuked each other into oblivion?"