Am I required to pull off crazy Golden Cookie combos?

I want to put less active time into the game but I want to keep my pace for unlocking achievements.

Unfortunately, at this stage of the game, you have to pick a method and stick with it if you want reasonable progression. You do have the option of going full idle; that is,

• Turn on Shimmering Veil and the Golden Switch
• Slot Holobore into your pantheon (though still after Mokalsium)
• Clear everything out of your garden and plant a few doughshrooms and/or crumbspores. Set your soil to fertilizer (if you plan to occasionally clear out weeds, about once a day) or wood chips (if you don't want to deal with weeds except very rarely)
• Set your dragon auras to Breath of Milk and Radiant Appetite
• Get to at least 100 sugar lumps banked and stay there to make maximum use of Sugar Baking
• Make sure you buy every prestiege upgrade before taking on this strategy, as resetting takes a lot of work and kinda defeats the point of going full idle

This gives you the maximum possible completely idle CPS, with the benefit of still being able to buy/sell stocks and use the Conjure Baked Goods spell for minor bumps in total cookies baked if you want to occasionally interact with the game.

Even with all this, it will likely take months of idling to reach the next few achievement milestones. The game is just not balanced around this style of play when you have this many cookies. If you want to reach the last few achievements within the decade (barring a new update), you will have to pull off some crazy golden cookie combos.

No. There is really not.

I'm in the same spot as you (3.555 quattuordecillion 499/518 Achievements), and the only way to get any kind of fast progression is with the Golden Cookie combo.

Golden Cookie combos are the most effective ways to build up more cookies. (From the official CC discord) the general Golden/Wrath Cookie effects are:

• Frenzy (F)
• Elder frenzy (EF)
• Click frenzy (CF)
• Cursed Finger (CuF)
• Dragon Harvest (DH)
• Dragonflight (DF)

You will want to combo several of these together to get anywhere quickly. There is also Godzamok selling building buffs, Mokalsium buffs, etc.

There is also Bakeberries, for which harvesting 36 will give 18 hours of CpS instantly, so combine with golden cookie combos. It is good to plant them during Cursed Finger as Bakeberries cost 45 mins of CpS and Cursed Finger temporarily sets CpS to zero, making Bakeberries cost the absolute minimum of 100 million (essentially free).

The stock market in lategame is only useful for achievements as stock market CpS is not affected by active buffs or debuffs.