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Caelum has A2W1 mages at 100 Gold, and A3W2?1 mages for 180 gold.
They fly and are cold immune.
They can trapeze, quickness, cast lightning that ignores armor, and such.
A Marignon F3S2?1 mage or an Abysya B3S2?1 mage, to compare magic paths numbers, costs 270 gold.
They don't fly, nor they paths are so powerful as the Caelumnian ones.
It is justified by devs that Caelum is a magocracy ... well, so on considering the game is most winned by magic, why not everyone wants a full magic nation (like Caelum, or Pythium, to say).
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True, Caelum has cheap(er) mages. But their troops are pretty much crap. Any nation with stealth units can make similar strikes deep into enemy territory. Plus, taking territory is easy, holding it is expensive. Even if Caelum is raiding your heartlands, a few smaller armies should be able to mop up behind them.
Cold resistance doesn't do much, IMHO. The only time I see cold having an effect is with SC's, and you don't want to melee SC's with your mages, anyway. I would much rather have fire resistance or electricity resistance. I would probably even prefer poison resistance over cold resistance.
Abysia has other strengths, such as blood. An army of devils led by a couple of demonbred has exactly the same flying capability as a Caelum army, and the troops are much, much, much better.
Marignon has inquisition, which is very effective at pushing dominion.
As another example, Machaka has 80 gold Witch Doctors. They also have Black Sorcerers, which, for 70 gold more than Caelum mages lose flying but turn into beefy hunter spiders when wounded.
I could go on, but the point is, I just don't see it.
Just for example, I would think Vanheim would have a pretty easy time against Caelum. The Vans can be on the Caelum troops so quickly that the mages don't have time to do much, and the Vanadrotts can make an entire army resistant to electricity. Plus, Vanheim's stealthy troops can wage the same hit-and-run war that Caelum can, plus they can dominion push or summon with blood from the Vanjarls.
I'll conclude by saying that I have less experience with Caelum than pretty much any other nation, so I could be very wrong, but I think it's a shame when people ban or "nerf" nations or strategies they find difficult to counter, rather than trying to figure out a counter.