I threw the following scenario into my Calculation Sheet:
Opponent has teched into halb and producest them with 80 vills. You have the option to tech into Arbs, HC or Elite Skirm to counter. As it is only a addition to your current cavalry force you don’t want to spent your whole eco to that addition. So I chose for the beginning about 60 vils are a reasonable amount of vills invested into that switch.
For the Arbs and Skirms I chose to count all upgrades except the attack ones, as they are very likely to have already for sake of your defenses. Still the investment into Arbs/Skirms is way higher than into HC. In case of the arb the tech-in makes about 31 % of their cost whilst the hand cannon tech ratio is almost half of that (16%).
With this I got a equilibrium of numbers with 56 Halbs: 34 arbs, 27 HC, 42 skirms.
Then I threw these results into https://aoe-combatsim.com/
With medium hit and run.
Result:
Arbs: 30 Arbs left - 4 lost
HC: 15 HC left - 12 lost
Skirms: 25 Halbs left - 31 killed
Now I checked how berbers xbows would do:
Berbers xbows: 30 xbows left - 7 lost
Meaning, in that reasonable sit Berbers would do better to tech into xbows than into HC.
Now I got Curious and threw Teutons xBow, lacking bracer and thumb ring, into the ring:
Teutons xbows: 20 xbows left - 22 lost
One of the worst archer civs in the game - and it almost makes sense to tech into xbows for teutons, almost as much sense as teching into HC. I think this is the reasoning behind the bad state of HC. Even in the Sits that seem to be suited for them, they can’t even outperform the archer line lacking several of the key upgrades. No wonder they have that bad state.
Quick note to skirms: They seem to underperform, but ofc they make more sense in the bigger context, as you will ofthen face halbs with ranged support. Then you will also invest more into the skirm switch and have a bigger mass. Then halbs have problems against them. This test only showed investing less to counter halbs and skirms can’t really shine in that situation. With equal investments skirms easily win (and ofc cost no gold).
PS: If you want I can calculate the Unique counters + champions also, to see how they perform in this situation.
Edit: I found a mistake in the calc of the halberdiers, there I assumed falsely only 60 workers to push them out. As it only applies to the halbs I will leave it there. I don’t think it changes the assertion qualitatively. Just keep in mind that the assumed halb numbers are lower than they would be if that situation occurs in a real game. There it would be about 75, not 56.