One thing to notice is that your troops all have a fairly high gold to resource cost. This means that you can fairly comfortably use Sloth to get design points. If you want to go for a bless strategy, I would personally go for F9 and skip Water. Glamour already does a lot to keep your troops alive, and your sacred troops and leaders all have multiple attacks, so you might as well ensure they hit insanely hard. Sticking to a single bless is a *lot* cheaper than going for a dual bless, and the better scales that you can afford may solve your problem of not having enough troops.
I wouldn't worry about putting Air on your pretender to gain access to the better Air spells, that is after all what Vanadrotts are for
If you are having difficulty researching, you are probably not buying enough Dwarven Smiths. They are your best researchers. You can also research Construction 2 early on, and build some Owl Quills.
An outline for a design incorporating the points I've mentioned:
Take an Awake Red Dragon. Give him Fire 9. Take Order 1, Sloth 3, Cold 1, Luck 1, Magic 1, Dominion 6. These scale choices can be tweaked to taste, but are probably how I would do it.
On the 1st turn, buy a Vanjarl and a couple of Vanheres. Leave your Dragon in human form, and have him research Construction. On turn 2, make your Vanjarl your Prophet, buy a Dwarven Smith, and whatever other troops you can reasonably afford. Switch your Dragon to his Dragon form, script him to Fire Closest, place him about 1/4 of the way away from the front of the battle board, and send him out to take the most weakly-defended province next to your castle. You want to start conquering ASAP to minimize the affects of all that Sloth by using the admin value of your Fortified City to gather resources. On turn 3, your Prophet can lead your army out to begin conquering as well.
Once you hit Construction 2, you can make Bracers of Defence and an Amulet of Missle Protection for your Dragon, and start forging some Owl Quills to boost your research.
Your next research goal might be Evocation 2, so your Vanjarls can start tossing lightning bolts at the enemy with their superb precision.
Hope this helps.