Likewise here. Tryign to trigger other stuff, btu this one has me stumped

I was in the same boat as you guys when I played the campaign before all the patches.  I'd hoped it'd been fixed... but it appears not.  Just keep going up the left side ocean until you can land behind the gated wall that is blocking your northern force.  Land on the beach there and touch the fire shard to unlock the gate.  Just forget Gilden exists and the campaign will progress.

Did you get a popup from Gilden earlier on before you'd even sent troops over? I suspect it's that the caravan (note the road there) triggered it already.

OK, I think I was wrong. I loaded a saved game from the beginning of the chapter, before I got the 1st ship, and I disbanded the caravan.

Then when I got to the Gilden capitol I got a message about Lord Markinn not able to send troops but that he left some carts outside the city walls. Is this the popup you were referring to? If so, I did get it before, probably by the caravan, as you guessed. But if that is what's supposed to happen, where is my loot? I mean, my resources haven't changed and I don't see any supplies outside the city... So what *did* Markinn give me??

ManBitesDog: Do as Kardiophylax suggested - keep sailing along the shoreline, first west and then north until you reach the area marked on the map (with the fire shard).

I forgot to mention that I had a caravan going to Procipinee's town too, so I got her popup even before Markinn's.

By the way, I found another bug and since I can't be arsed to check the known bug list, ignore this if it has already been reported: I fought the dragon with Relias's group and lost but I did kill the dragon, only it's rider was left alive. Relias didn't die, just fled to the nearest town, so I brought him back. But, while he was returning to the fight, I killed the dragon's rider with another group of soldiers. When I got to the place the dragon died with Relias, nothing happened and I had to load a game and kill the dragon with Relias.

I had something similar happen to me this afternoon.  I had two groups fight the dragon.  The first was slaughtered, as expected, but they killed off all but the dragon and his rider.  A second group, containing Relias, fought and killed the dragon, but left the rider alive.  I was about to reload my last save, but the campaign was won after Relias teleported back to the nearest village.  If I would have known that only the dragon had to die, I would have played things differently.  Not sure if this was expected behavior, but it seems a little odd that you can win with the Rider still alive.

Also, I got the pop-up from Gilden about there being carts outside the village, but then no units appearing.  I only had caravan's moving between the two starting towns (never thought to send them to other kingdoms), so they didn't trigger anything early.  I had to send a hero from my boat up to the village to get the pop-up.