[Quitti]

Vanheim (EA+MA) have expensive (though sacred) and crappy mages. B1 easily achievable at high price. It doesn't seem that they were meant to be a heavy blood nation, more like dabble in it for additional benefit - but the problem probably is that air itself is quite crappy, and the van troops are not actually top tier cost/effectiveness wise while not bad per se. They'd benefit from heavy investment in blood, which would require the aforementioned dousing bonus added to vanjarls/vanadrotts, or another way to boost them might be to add a cheap-ish nonsacred human mage (n1e1 witches, n1+0.1 forest wizards or w/e) to help them with research and diversity.

Also I agree with Squirreloid about MA Ulm @ cbm 1.7. Who wouldn't want easy +5e from early-midgame for themselves? It's not like Ulm can defend themselves in the late game either though with their national troops and mages. Black priests drain immune + recruit everywhere might help the problem (iron darts/blizzard casters), as would boosting up the master smith random to 25% or even 50%.

edit: and also boosting the stats of the normal troops. Make them base enc1 or 2, add in 1-2 attack for all of them. They're supposed to be THE human troops of the game who don't tire from combat and are exceptionally good at it. Armor revamp was a good step forward, but it (almost) equally boosts all other heavy armor nations in the game.