Skirmishers seem ok to me. I am certainly not tempted to rely on their firepower to win a battle (unlike archers in vanilla RTW or slingers in pre-6.0 RTR). I hardly notice the damage my own do to the enemy and enemy skirmishers tend to crumple quickly to my own infantry (Roman). Losing 6 hastati to a volley sounds ok to me - you could think of it as some javelins making the shields useless and the casualties accruing over more than one volley (RTW battles happen much more quickly than real ones obviously).
I agree about the AI going overboard on velites though. I just had to wade through 10 Carthaginian ones in Corsica (supported by only 2 poeni citizen militia). I large stack of slingers was more painful for my hastati etc to face though - perhaps rightly so.
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