1. Technologies that increase resistance, etc.
2. Gathering speed multipliers (up to the Medium level, the player has certain bonuses; at Medium and above, resource gathering speed is the same)
Sandbox=0.42,
Very Easy=0.56,
Easy=0.75,
Medium=1.00,
Hard=1.00,
Very Hard=1.00
3. The Medium level may have some vanilla restrictions on the number of towers or fortresses.
It doesn't work like that, I just tested it with the Corral. They do continue with the species of the last queued animal, as would be expected, but the animals neither specifically queued nor belonging to the species of the last queued animal are left alone.