Ah, that makes sense. I disagree, but I can see where you're coming from.
Out of curiosity, how do you deal with armies consisting almost entirely of phalangites (often with a few normal heavy infantry mixed in - say a bunch of pezhetairoi with those Ptolemaic galatians)? Those are the main motivation for skirmishers in my African armies. I find that the pila just don't have the ammo to do much, and I try very hard not to let a unit get stuck pinning a phalanx for very long (the good phalanxes can survive a "sandwich" long enough to do a lot of damage to the guys facing the spearpoints, in my battles). So mounted and foot skirmishers help me a lot; if I can get the foot skirmishers behind a phalanx, perhaps as it's first making contact with a unit, a couple of volleys of javelins absolutely devastates it.
I also find it satisfying and appropriate to clean up small phalanx detachments in the desert with pure Numidian groups (2 foot, 2 cav vs. 3 klerouchikoi phalangitai - that was fun).
Re: elephants, if I cared about money, I wouldn't have built them.

Indeed the high cost is something of a feature, not a bug, much like my fleets of quinquiremes. Gotta at least try to avoid those Nota Censoria and related traits. As for actual usefulness, I think I'm running about 50/50 very effective/useless so far. Depends whether the AI has skirmishers, and whether I notice them if they do...
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