[OmikronWarrior]

It's been a while since I've messed around with Abysia in SP (and never in MP), but I remember a few things. Bascially, Abysia has expensive troops that gold for gold probably won't stand up to the troops of other nations on their own. Also, their demons meaning additional weaknesses (though their MR seemed to be high enough that Banishment wasn't a great worry). Regardless, to make them work they need to be supported by mages, and what Abysia has in mages is powerful fire mages. And guess what? All your line troops are immune to fire in EA. The obvious strategy is going to be put troops in the middle to occupy the armies and use your mages to cast the hardest hitting fire evocations available to them. Plus, your line troops have very high protection meaning they can last a while in a fight. Also, if my memory serves, Abysia has a purchasable Fire-4 mage. One more thing, don't forget you can alchemize your fire gems for money.

Let me boot up the game to see if I can recommend a Pretender strategy.

Edit: OK, I found Order-3, Production-3, Growth-0, Misfortune-2, Heat-3 (this one is obvious and should always be done no matter what your pretender strategy), and Magic-1 with a Solar Disc Pretender with Fire-8 and Dominion-7 (to help spread the heat). Your best path for researcher will be Evocation with Second Sun as the ultimate goal. Early Enchantment gives you little, but starting with level 5 you get Inner Furnace and later on Eternal Pyre. Obviously you should get some Construction to build items that increase fire magic.

Alternate strategy found in manual: Take an Imprisoned Scorpian with 9-fire and 9-earth and build as many of your sacred units as you can (which won't be that many). Bless, and use them along side fire mages. I'm leery about this strategy being viable in the long term (as the sacreds are capitol only and it involves taking some scale hits), but it may be worthwhile.