Heroes 5.5 WarGame Edition - Tactical Edition.

Hmm, well, that’s worse... And won’t you be buffing “call reinforcements” to go along with this? I mean, reducing the penalty to movement.
In general, yes, it might not be very good without chains, I agree. Or, set larger values from the start (the troops from the Castle are relevant anyway).

Calling reinforcements allows you to instantly get huge reinforcements (from top-tier troops) for a ridiculously low mana cost. I don’t think it needs additional buffs, considering that even 1 dragon here is equivalent to 3-5 dragons in the original (depending on how long the game is drawn out).

Added 10 minutes ago

I don’t remember, are you using scripts to change the growth rates? And is this visible? If so, then it doesn’t seem to be a problem.

No, it’s not visible – I had to manually enter the growth rate information as reference. I had to make these sacrifices for a more interesting Stronghold build.