[kasnavada]

I've been using those tricks to prevent my troops from being hit by arrows :

Idea 1 :
The best armored unit EA pangaea has access to in my opinion is the demon knight. Ir requires Earth 2 and Blood 2 to cast, blood 4 research (so not too difficult to get), which all of your pan can cast with any blood booster or a earth booster, which all of your pans with 2 earth can make : earth boot. Note that blood 3 earth 2 also enables you to make blood stones, which produce 1 earth gem per turn. This unit is pretty much immune to most arrow barrage with 22 protection and 19 defense, it also prety effective to kill your ennemies, is cavalry, so it moves fast enough to keep up with your centaurs. As a finishing touch, it's also immune to what is one of the main spell for archers, fire arrows, since it's immune from fire.

The problem is that it takes about a game year and a half to set up the required blood economy, research, boosters, and after that it takes some time to amass more of those troops.

Idea 2 : using flyers to prevent arrows from hitting you. Either recruiting lots of harpies (early in the game) set on "attack archers" or use a flying SC or thug (later on) to attack archers. The archers AI will attempt to kill the troops with their knives and will not aim at your troops. Using harpies means that the casualties can be pretty high and cause a rout though, so be careful. Having 2 sets of flyers, one set as "attack archers" and the other one set as "hold and attack" works the best for me. I often have a significant part of archers blocked during 4 turns with this idea.

Idea 3 : centaur archers. They have lots of HP and aim pretty well. Setting them on 'fire archers' will kill the archers pretty fast.

Idea 4 : using maenads as arrow catchers. They come free with pans anyway. Place maenads like this :
___Min___
______Mae
______Mae
___Min___

Default orders for archery is "fire closest", so the maenads will get hit while the minotaur close in. Againt, be careful, getting too many maenad killed hurts your morale in the end.

You were already told about spells that give bonus to armor, and quickness spells... so I won't had stuff on that.

There might be other ways, but I can't think of any at the time.

About rainbow :
The pretender I use for a rainbow strategy is somewhat different, but I have not found a "perfect" set-up yet. I plan to use her for site searching, elemental king summoning, to forge boosters and gem-producing items.

Since I like the blood economy and royal court, I make her able to cast those. Your objectives might be different though, so feel free to modify it.

4F/4A/3W/3S/1E/2D/3N Enchanteress. It enables her to forge enough magic boosters to cast nearly anything she wishes, and helps diversify your magic, since she can cast most elemental royalty spells with few boosters, or "regular" boosters. You can got to. As a bonus, you might give her 3 blood magic and 2 earth for an easier access to blood stones.

I didn't give her Earth and nature more than necessary on purpose : a pan can searth those sites, and points cost a lot.

I hope that helps.

EDIT typos and :
Also : in the event you are using dryads as thugs, nature 4 could be interesting since dryads can bless themselves, are sacred, and therefore gain regeneration.