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i'm glad you are amused, i was worried i sounded like a jerk.
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It all sounded civil and reasonable to me.
Like others, I've had trouble with disobedience by scripted mages many times. For instance, in one of my present games, I tried to have a few Vanir cast lightning on a single vine-shield-wearing Tuatha that they couldn't beat in any other way. The Tuatha only had 15 hit points, and hadn't bothered to cast Resist Lightning; 1-3 good lightning strikes would have killed him. And lightning is, like, the most basic air attack spell. And it costs no gems. And I'd
told several of my mages to cast it, several times each. Instead, though, they produced a stream of illusory wolves and things that the Tuatha easily killed, and the province was lost. I can think of other ways to prepare to beat that particular foe with the resources I had then, but still, it's pretty lame that the obvious solution isn't allowed to work.
But this kind of problem doesn't get in my way very often. I think it's because I've simply learned to work around it. The recognition of these little bits of Dominions lore, and the formation of workarounds for them, comes naturally to me. It's a matter of fun puzzle-solving, sometimes.
Strangely, I've never had trouble with Flaming Arrows. So far, my mental model for the AI's decision-making process in the situation you describe is simpler than most of those so far presented in this thread: I've assumed that if the enemy force is strong, my commander will cast the spell, and not otherwise. The game's idea of what constitutes a "strong" force is difficult to pin down, but so far, my estimation hasn't failed. This isn't to say that this model is correct, while those involving esoteric questions of whether the archers are in range of their targets are incorrect--I'm just saying that that's what's worked for me so far.
More generally, what works for me (so far) is to learn how the AI behaves, and play accordingly. But this is an obvious strategy, and it seems to be what you're already trying to do.
If you do end up having to avoid playing certain nations because of this, well... that's not very bad, is it? There are plenty of nations. You could become an Atlantis specialist, and fight with neither fire, nor archers!