I tried everything as you suggested on the Ascension difficulty.
It works great, really well :) Once, it didn't work out (I attacked with dogs, but the Grog turned into a Wyvern after the turn), but otherwise, it's been good :)
Overall, it's very good :) It's just better not to attack Druids anyway (at least in the first 2 weeks) :) You can't remove 3 stacks in one hit.
Thank you very much (the only downside is that the Stronghold takes a lot of gold =). 10,000 goes on the first week (i.e., with other expenses - almost everything =) and in the middle of the second week, you have to scrape by with 1000 coins) (this is if the map doesn't have a built-in Fortress (e.g., on a random map generator), so it's difficult to build a Stronghold at the beginning.

Even on Ascension, at the beginning of the second week, there's almost no gold left at all (I had 40 gold left for one day) =) You just have to wait for the Magistrate to give 2000.