Apply Local Group Policy on non-domain w/ LGPO.exe or ADMX files

Question

I manage a small group of offline machines where historically I set gpo manually on each. Recently, I've been looking for a way improve the experience, by setting it once on a single machine, then move those settings to the other machines. Needless to say, I have very limited knowledge in this area. I have played around a bit with exporting the policy with lgpo.exe, then importing those settings on another machine, but it totally trashed the system the few times I have attempted it. As in, start menu items not working, accounts disabled, etc... This is on the same windows build btw.

So I am wondering if the exported gpo needs to be customized or tailored for each machine in some way? Or maybe someone has some advice in general on this process. From the docs and dozens of post, it seems that as long as your on the same build, gpo import via lgpo.exe works for a lot of people. I'm not understanding something with the process it seems.

Alternatively, are admx files a viable way to transfer some of these gpo settings? I'm gonna experiment with that some today. **Edit1: Nevermind on this, admx files are templates and do not contain any settings.

Thanks for any advice!

*Edit2:

• Found machine name in LGPO's Audit Policy Backup (audit.csv)
• Found user names in LGPO's Security Policy Backup (GptTmpl.inf)
• Going to experiment with editing the files to update the machine name & removing usernames from [privilege rights], see if I have better luck...

*Edit3:

• Well, no love. Removed machine names from audit policy backup, tried variations of removing and keeping user names in secpol backup, tried variations of restoring only machine/user registry pols and secpols... In all cases so far, importing the lgpo.exe backup from another identical os build (server 2016, 1607) results in a trashed registry.
• So the search continues on steps necessary to copy local group policy from one machine to another...
• Below are some pics of the errors received:
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