How to avoid losing all my archers/xbows

I’ve gotten decent at the archer build order in terms of timing. I have about 6 archers around 14 minutes, and 24-28 once I hit castle age.

However, I’ve lost many games where I have a much bigger army than my opponent, but then when my xbows are out in the open and when I briefly switch back to my eco, my xbows get totally wiped out by a mangonel or two. Then the game snowballs, and I lose. Should I keep my archers/xbows in my base until I know I can ignore my eco for a little while and give the xbows my undivided attention? How can you possibly raid effectively that way? This feels too passive. Should I not raid with xbows, and only use them in giant offenses? Do I just need to practice a lot more and eventually I’ll be able to switch successfully between xbow micro and eco micro?

When I drush into FC with knights, I’m about mid 1100 ELO in DE 1v1 random map (generally Arabia). When I go archers I’m probably mid 900s. Xbows feels so much harder. I’d like to be as aggressive (constant pressure, raiding vills) with xbows as I am with knights. How can I do that? What are things I should avoid? For example, with knights I can run deep into a walled enemy base, harass villlagers, and then run back out if needed without suffering casualties. If I send my xbows deep into a walled enemy base to get villager kills, that usually means they’re not coming back out. They tend to get slowly cornered, and eventually slaughtered.

Things I’ve tried that aren’t fully sufficient:

• Staggered formation. This makes a big difference

• Throw in a few knights. Should I assume I will always need a few knights?

• Split micro. My micro and timing are terrible. I often don’t even know when the mango is there in the first place

One more question. How to best micro vs a bunch of knights out in the open in Arabia? I suck at micro, and when there are a bunch of knights sometimes I lose track of the one I just shot, if it takes two shots to kill. Should I not step back until I can get two rounds of shots in, the first one I clicked, and the second the xbows shoot on their own? And I should I just go back in and hide in my base when I see knights with 2+2 armor (even when I have bodkin, ballistics, and archer ring)?