Why skirmishers feel like bad counters for new/low skilled players vs archer rushes

So, I have noticed some posts every so often about that skirms feel like bad counters vs archer rushs. They cost more food than archers seems to be the main thing

After doing some thinking about it, and playing some low difficulty AIs, because I suck, I think I have an answer as to why skirms seem bad (because low difficulty AI can build a few skirms to counter archers, but I generally have at least 5 archers and 2 ranges churning them out when I attack)

1. Skirms don't hard counter archers so hard that they do anything meaningful for 5 to 1 match up and they probably need to be closer to 1 to 1 than 2 to 1.

This means if you are building a counter skirm force, you really need to go fairly hard into skirms, if your opponent has 5 archers on you while you may not have an archery range.

1. You basically buffer the resources to make skirms naturally if you make villagers (as you should), meaning that if you are out econned by your opponent while adhering you, you can still attempt to resist them with skirms, but only by eating your castle age tuition, which is not sustainable in the long term.

The archer user might be paying more villager time per archer (65 resources vs 60 resources), but they have planned on it, and are on track to hit castle age when they want.

1. Getting archer rushed costs you villager time, as you either lose villagers or run them away.

Even if you had useful villager time parity with your opponent before the archer rush, them archer rushing you probably raided your wood line, costing you wood villager time.

This limits your abIlity to spam skirms as an effective counter unit, and makes it more likely that instead of fighting fully upgraded fuedal archers, you are attempting to fight fully upgraded crossbowmen. which beat full fuedal skirms in 1 to 1 fights. (crossbows deal 3 damage to 30 hp skirms, while skirms deal 4 damage to 35 hp crossbowmen, but attack 2 times for every 3 crossbow attacks before thumbring.)

At which point, fielding the right counter unit is not going to be able to overcome the econ, tech, and military advantage your opponent has.