The problem has been Westgard always grew towards monster hordes. You invited the hordes to come. And these weren't even that bad. I believe the monsters track food/peasants. Because of that, Eidulb was always a target, Gelene, Aquitain, all were huge targets. But you had your eyes fixed on the big names (Shrine, Eidulb) instead of growing north to Valkyrja and into Hvergelmir and eastern lands which did not have the same monster spawn rate. You never built a stable base.
All the gold in the game cannot overcome the monsters because gold is finite and monsters are not. It was a special sort of arrogance.
Ironically, I think looting the outlying regions helped you because the monsters are probably tracking south to Golden Farrow instead. Look at the RPs from Barret Erickson, there was a huge change in monster distribution. Looting the outlying lands and making them poor monster targets made them less likely to seek out rich targets like Gelene.
My character had IC reasons to not return to Gelene so sorry I couldn't help earlier but... You tried to new school an old school scenario. Didn't work.
