The comedy is quite typical – everyone has played it this way, time and time again... It's just called scouting! :D And you did an excellent job with it! Now, it would be good to do a clean run, avoiding the mistakes you yourself pointed out... That's where a worthy result would come from...
Remembering your words about why you don't have much luck in offline mode, I'll say this: OFFLINE is primarily about detailed scouting, which can be done best by playing through the map, and then doing several clean runs... We take the best of those... and replay it again... :D
Otherwise, it's impossible... ;)
I think so... Self-critical and easy to understand... Although, I think you need to explain in more detail how you managed to lose a hundred dragons in one battle... :) Just kidding. No one will believe it anyway! ;)
In that battle of 500, I encountered a hundred of the bravest and most valiant ghost dragons on that cursed land... and what do you think they did??... they rushed into 7000 enemies... idiot! ...damn it... I told them, "Don't look at the 300 Spartans before the battle, that's a completely different story..." but they didn't listen :)
May they rest in peace... my save file:)
Added 2 minutes ago
3. Struggle a bit yourself...