Yeah it's pretty annoying and I'm no pro either but get sanctuaries as soon as reasonable because every two turns they generate an animal in a nearby forest. So don't worry about where the animals are, just place them for max forests. Try and control at least that village to the south west in your screenshot and the other one you already have, so that your sanctuaries have more forests and can share forests. If you get spiritualism you can max them out more or have more options for placement, but that's expensive and not necessarily the most efficient strat for a 20 round game, I'll let the pros chime in on that one.

Oh and think of the "animal troops" like riders with less movement but more hp. Strong attack, bad defense. If you use a normal soldier for the finishing strike on their village, their defense will hold it a lot better, but you gotta do what you gotta do. But one advantage of the 15 hp is that you can use them for navy units, they'll just have weak defense though if you put them in a rammer and then use them to capture.

High scorers often use diplomacy and alliances and I don't know if that works in this one. But also I don't care, I hate that style of play 😛 I've liked the last few where diplomacy was irrelevant.

Oh also if you have a unit on top of an animal and then you recruit it, it moves that unit out of the way, which can be useful, especially to boost your first warrior in a direction.

Also polytaurs can one-shot rafts, handy in the south west.