I did not call this an exploit.  I called it a strategy, a synergy, a good player, whatever!

Or just have them destroy whatever disturbed them.  But what we have now is:

1. The developers have kept the AI settling near big beasts.

2. The developers have kept the big beasts target player cities preferentially. (I would bet a half a million this is true on Expert in 1.01. Yes, Frogboy, I mean it, I would put the cash in escrow, and the loser pays for the experts. I feel it is true on challenging as well, but I do not play there, so i am not sure)

3. The developers seem intent on stopping any strategy that can deal with a big beast around turn 50, which is when the Ai is pretty much guaranteed to start disturbing big beasts.

This situation is horrible. I think it is costing the game players.  I know I cannot convince my wife FE is worth playing (She plays Dominions 3, Din's Curse and X-Com:EU, Fallen Enchantress should be right down her alley)

I agree that this is not an exploit. The number of healing potions needed really demonstrates this to me. Basically you need to be level X and have at least 200 gold to defeat this dragon.

But there are other things that are exploits that should be fixed.

For example I shouldn't be able to cast tireless march to move 1 more move, but un-enchant and cast it again to gain 1 more move and un-enchant and cast it again to gain 1 more move. This is an exploit to gain maybe an extra 10 moves, sure at the expense of mana, but if someone is going to do this it should be a separate spell or not possible to do this.

I would even be happy with a leash type idea. The creature shouldn't wander more than a radius of 5 tiles away from their lair. That should be enough to stop it from crushing player cities. I feel your pain about some parts of the game, but how to accomplish the desired results without the world seeming to artificial is hard to program into monsters. The randomness that the frog has done is great along these lines, but we can't ruin the fun with maurading powerful monsters. Plus, wouldn't these powerful monsters be more inclined to protect their lairs and their children have more of the wanderlust.

I think that Salted Pork should be reduced to the hitpoints they provide from 20 to 10 and cost half as much as well. That would make them still viable early game, but not game breaking.

Just had to deal with a dragon in my game.  They are hard, but the really big issue is that they injure themselves with their own breath.  Quite badly.  This was the only reason I was able to beat it.  If this one thing was fixed, I think that dragons would be quite difficult enough.

I do think the heal spell versus some of the bread, nectars, and potions is fairly weak.