Template Globals seem undefined after install with site theme

I’m creating a new site theme based on agile_records. All pages except for the homepage blank out until I go to Global Template Variables and hit Update. Then everything’s fine, even though I haven’t changed any values. All I can think of is that Enable Strict URLs is not actually set to No even though I set it to be so in the site theme’s default_content.php file, which I copied from agile_record’s:

/** -------------------------------------
/** Set theme
/** -------------------------------------*/

// Set the Member profile theme default, and Strict 404 settings
$this->config->update_site_prefs(array(
                                        'member_theme'    => 'basic_maths',
                                        'strict_urls'    => 'n',
                                        'site_404'        => 'index/404'
                                        ),
                                        1 // site id
                                );

Here I changed ‘strict_urls’ to ‘n’ from agile_records’ ‘y’. And the behavior isn’t the same as when Enable Strict URLs is set to Yes, when I am indeed taken to the 404 page.

Are these values set in the exp_sites table? I couldn’t find them anywhere else. The values in exp_sites are encoded, so I can’t see what they actually are. (Why are they encoded?)