Reset db "auto_increment" count?
I assume you're referring to the auto incrementing primary key values in the tables.  Craft doesn't manage that at all, but relies on MySQL to do so.

See here for discussion on how to do it, just keep in mind that there's a pretty high chance you'll be breaking foreign key constraints on existing data.  And I'm pretty sure you'll need to truncate the table first before running the command you tried.


  I've also noticed that there is no auto_increment setting in the table structures.


Sure it does. Check the primary key of any table and you'll see the auto increment bit.