skirms are nice, no doubt. or better said i can imagine. maybe i play archmage krell soon and go heavy on skirms
as mentioned, even with my army that has no skirms at all and only 2 or 3 light cavs, i may use lt cav to "soften up" a target (more often to fish weak units though). skirmishers or archers take no damage when atatcking melee units. other things good to soften up "uber"units may be siege units, bombardiers and archers (archers are fragile though)
it maybe also possibel to completely renounce on skyhunters and just rely on archers and siege instead (to defend against flying units) although that woudl require that your armies stick close together and skyhunters are good scouts and can search/hunt down wounded enemies like no other because of their mobility