National spells can be very strong(read umbrals and seraphs) but most are there for flavour or to add something to a nation(tien chi gets some sacreds who can really take and dish out damage that go well with their fragile sacred warriors).
If you give your W9 Dragon a ring of regen and a pendant of luck he will be a killing machine. You have some great infantry(low resource tower shields, composite bows and good damage sacreds). Site search early and often with both manual(flying CMs) and remote(you have alot of level 2's) searching and use these gems both to outfit thugs and SCs(sleepers and elemental royalty are nice) and to forge boosters(get a wing of wizardry and a staff of elemental mastery on a CM, theres not much he cant forge
) and maybe get up globals; forge of the ancients in particular is very powerful for EA tien chi's versatile mages.
Also make good, sorry, i mean great use of battle magic. You have acid spells, magma spells aswell as possible clouds(sulphur/freezing are good early against the glamour nations) and other elemental spells such as falling fires/frost, bladewind and thunder strike. Your versatile(and flying if using CMs) mages with boosters, spell boosters and gems if neccesary can really put the hurt on your enemy and help defend you early on along with your dragon(in a mp game which i thought was lost i beat a double blessed lankan army almost purely with battlemagic).