If someone goes scouts into knights, you only need maybe 3 spearmen and upgrage to pikes with minimanl additional numbers to defend ok. With archers I just dont feel like they get countered hard enough. I know you will argue that scouts and knights have mobility, but I just think it is a bit uneven in how succesful defending with counters is.
1 skirm can beat 1 archer with ease.
but 1 pike loses to 1 knight.
but skirms don’t hardcounter archers enough?
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Skirmishers counter better Archers better than Pikes do vs Knights. Knights can easily escape, while Archers can’t.
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skirms also win 1v1 whereas pikes do not.
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skirms actually have a unfortunate stand in the game because they are backline vs backline units.
I’d like an upgrade to skirms in the endgame like the halberd.
From all trash skirms are probably the least important in lategame.
But I’m not sure it’s really necessary because there are already onagers. Even viatnemese rarely make imp skirms, besides they are so much better.
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Theres a lot more to take into account than just what a counter unit does. Archers take nearly half the time to gather recources for a unit. If you are opening scouts you have to build an archery range which is 175 wood. All I know is scout openings are dead. Maa into archers is way too meta. It is getting impossible to do other openings. They tried to address the scout openings with taking longer to build palisades. I dont even think scouts are that weak, it is just if they are going archers, you are basically dead.
It’s because scouts cost food, which is much more valueable in that time than gold.
But at very high level the mobility and map control of the scouts is even more valueable and the scouting will allow you to spot the archers, wall and render them useless. So it’s not suprising most pros actually open with scouts.
Just remember to do armor upgrade and skirms are super strong.
A group of 20 xbows will never get a cost-effective trade against 8 FU castle age elite skirms.
Famous last words. Try that with micro and you’ll get different results.
Gets worse if we factor terrain (hills outside the base)
On top of the fact that skirms are much more expensive to tech into (including 2nd level of armour which xbows don’t need)
And if you’re defending with skirms it means you might want to tech into another line(eg kts) which again costs more res.
But its intentionally favouring aggressive over defensive units
But skirms train faster than archers so you only need one range.
Not really.
And at any level going scout lets you set up a better food eco.
Skirms counter archers in a different way than how pikes counter cav. For pikes, bonus damage is everything (civ bonus aside).
Skirms instead counter archers thanks to their high PA, which make them difficult to kill with just archer.
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skirms counter generic archers just fine, try it out in the scenario editor, put 5 skirms vs 5 archers against each other and check the HP left…
and once you have done that, you will see for yourself that if you manage to engage archers with skirms, you will always have a very favourable outcome, as the enemy is wasting away valuable gold, while you are using one of the cheapest units in the game 
of course results can be skewed. If you negligently set a rally point to your skirms, and the enemy micronerds your skirms down while you aren’t paying attention to them, then it is more of a player deficiency than the skirms fault…
Skirm is a good 1v1 counter vs archers but bad in teamgames (with knight present). So it is hard to balance l