[DeathDaemon]

I am having trouble as EA Oceana on land in a current game (AI and MP), even though I am leading the score charts in every category.

Playing Cradle, my strategy:
1. Hire land mercenaries whenever possible.
2. Take the port cities for money and blockading.
Lots of money for improvements and castles, and to spread around the map quickly before nations expand.
3. Build temples at every underwater province
I went with Cold 3, Sloth 3, and high dominion to spread those crap scales around)
4. Site search above and below water.
5. 15+ frozen heart casters per army with usually a 50% FR chest or similar protection.
6. Lots of enchantments and remote spells (not here yet)

My land combat is pathetic. I have hordes of archers and heavy infantry, with javelin light infantry mixed with my triton raiders. The armies do ok against independents, but even with my huge income bonus I can't keep up with 4-5 fronts of AIs, which is quite common on Cradle. The frozen heart spam is nice, but took a lot of research (not much useful in alteration) and lots of money and time (tons of castles to make mages). Unfortunately I don't have a large water gem income to consider Sea Trolls yet. I do have a tons of other gems, but no casters to use them other than my god and 2S2A indy mages. Of course I've started boosting and empowering my randoms, but I couldn't have done any of this w/o a good amount of luck. Maybe I've overextended a bit, but I'm not making much progress on land. Luckily most of the opponents are AI, or else I would have given all my indy land and my castles to them without a fight. What combat magic should I use, and how do you expand on land and keep it?