[Edi]

I've found some rather nicely working designs (though not MP tested) that I like.

For Abysia, I like a Scorpion King with F4/E6, Scales Order 2, Prod 3, Magic 2 (as a rule, I do not like Misfortune) and of course the Heat 3, and using the standard castle. The E6 is especially nice because the most combat oriented mages (especially the ones used early on, the demonbred and the anathemants) are sacred, so they get an extra 3 reinvigoration. Dominion value is somewhere around 6 for this chassis, and it works surprisingly well. Researching Evo 3 (or at least Evo 2) quickly makes the SK a serious artillery support that can and will eat almost anything that gets through the infantry for lunch, and later can be used by himself to wipe out indeps. Especially good with Zen's pretender mod, because he gains a body slot for armor and mounted status so armor encumbrance is ignored for melee purposes (not spellcasting, though). I've been using this particular one for my first MP, and it was very good until an indie heavy cavalry gave him the mute affliction and made him only so much decoration for teh ~35 turns it took a faerie queen to heal him (I swear, took at least 25 turns before the affliction disappeared while my mindhunt feebleminded warlocks were back in action in 2 to 5 turns...)

For Vanheim, resources tend not to be an issue, but you still need some of them, so I use the basic fortress (30 admin). Haven't tried much yet, but the Allfather gives a solid pretender, and a blue dragon can give a nice water bless for the van and valkyries.

For Arco, switch the wizard tower to the 30 admin fort, give the Nataraja E3 (Summon Earth Power + Invulnerability rocks, though you can do that with E2 too). Magic 1 is enough, 3 points of that scale is too expensive a price tag for the benefits considering what else you can do with 80 points. Dominion score is around 5 or 6, don't really remember.

Edi