[OmikronWarrior]

Eh, don't beat yourself up to much, MA Abysia comes with a lot of hurdles that make them one of the weakest nations in the Middle Era.

And I was just messing around with MA Abysia to get a feel for them for a game I will be hosting soon.

So, I'd say the major challenge to overcome with Abysia is suboptimal mages. Your non-capital mages offer terrible Research Points for the gold they cost, and all come with old age meaning a lot will get diseased every winter and die soon after. This is agravted by non-capital mages being Fire and Holy and no other paths, meaning capital mages must provide diversity.

That being said, their national troops are pretty good, albeit resource intensive. A positive scales, production-3 pretender design will be fine for expansion.

So, I can recommend (off the top my head and with my limited experience), two approaches for pretender design. The first is to go for broke and pick up a Awake SC Pretender (such as a pathless Dominion-9/10 Wyrm) alongside the best scales you can afford and try to rush as much as expansion as you can. If you are lucky, you might accumulate a large of territory lead to be competitive until you research Fire Storm and Heat from Hell, which will make most nations hesitant to attack you in force, fire-immune troops are hard to come-by.

Another approach is a sleeping Rainbow, such as a crone with Air-3, Nature-3, Earth-3, Water-3, and Death-3. Buy positive scales again, and expand with your national infantry. When the crone/Rainbow awakens, start site searching. If you are lucky, you may find a site that provides worthwhile independent mages.

As for fire-immunity, I believe the spells in questions such as Army of Gold only provide 50% fire resistance, which is not resistant enough.

Hope that gave you some ideas.