Like Traflagar I've posted on this subject before, and I still like my strategy, though hearing from some others got me to adapt a 'bit' of the zoning strategy, if you can call it that, and it's worked well for the limited situation of making sure the barb cities stay clear of where I'm intending on building the next city.
Now basically my strategy is a bit of the opposite of the zoning strategy (the strategy where you send out so many units to establish zones where the barbs can't be created) in that I actually 'want' the barbs not only to be created to a fairly high extent, but I also want them to make cities. They give me lots of lovely experience and monies
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The basic idea is to have two military units for each city, but early on, one will suffice. You also want to make 2-3 units as attackers. Where you place them isn't too important. I usually place them in cities or on the outermost barb temptation (meaning mines, resources, etc.). It's not that unusual with this strategy that you at times will leave a city bare of defense, but that is done primarily to keep inflicting casualties. The idea being that if you wait to eliminate them things get worse. Indeed, as the game progresses, the barbs are at their worst when they get the axemen often enough, and should you get axemen fairly quick then they're not too bad a problem. The thing to remember is that you can throw out axemen non-stop, but the barbs cannot, as other lesser types try to attack too.
The main thing, like in scouting, is that you manage to get the barbs to attack your units preferably in jungles or forests. In my case I most strongly don't believe in making archers into hill mongers. Instead, I use them as city defense. Since there are times when I will leave a city defenseless (usually the capitol - since it has the greatest vision) it is also true that archers are used to attack or defend elsewhere, but the clincher is to not use the hills for defense. They're good for vision, but I think with a heavy attack the vision is of much less importance, and instead the survivability rate of your units is more so. If you purposelessly place archers with a hill promotion, on a hill, he gets 50% defense bonus I believe, but if you place one city promoted in woods, he does just as well (and better in jungle). Now the point isn't that the city-promoted one does any better than the hill-promoted one in the same woods, but that it would be pointless to the vision advantage to place the hill-promoted one in woods or jungle. My strategy there is that while I have a little less time to react, perhaps, I'm more fit to fight, assuming the barbs are going to come that way anyway.
Now, how are the city-promoted archers a better idea? Because they're terrors, even against axemen, in cities. You have to weigh just what kind of importance you want to place on your military units here. To me, the survivability of every unit I make is of primary importance. If they survive, I have to make far fewer of them. So there you have my archers, in a very good defensive terrain from the start (guarding cities), and when needed, to wander out to the woods to hope to draw barbs enroute onto something else. I just won't use them protecting resources because they're just too vulnerable there (though counter-attacking to keep resources is certainly not out of the question). The result is that I have a archer unit which is devastating in one of the primary targets for barbs, cities, so good survivability there.
Although I certainly don't make a beeline for axemen (bronze working) I also don't dwaddle and keep picking the cheapest techs such that bronze working takes forever to get. Once I get to using axemen that's when I start going into placing my archers almost entirely in cities and the axemen become the border patrols. They're not out there to stop barb generation in any way, they are there only to draw some activity before the barbs get to anything useful, and of course to be my primary counter-attack arm. I already mentioned what I do once I get swordsmen, as they're fairly useless against the barbs throwing a certain amount of axemen at you, anyway.
Later, you build like 3-4 swordsmen with the city raider promotion(s). From that point you are making them to eliminate barb cities (placing them in the same hex all of the time when going after cities), while keeping your homeland as defended as it was before. After that, you won't have much need of barb defense because not only will wrecked cities stun them somewhat, but also all the other civs and yourself will be expanding, thereby making his spawning territory smaller and smaller.
So:
archers - city defense promoted only. In the early stages, when I'm creating my first offensive unit, I might resort to giving one of these a strength bonus instead especially if the barbs are more noteworthy and it looks like getting axemen will be a pain due to excessive effort it will require to acquire the bronze (closest resource way far off, or deciding that researching next for iron working is more plausible). I believe the city defense bonus, used twice, gives the archer a 75% bonus, let alone the truly killer effect of a triple city bonus (that would be a 100% defense bonus?). Another good thing about this particular brand of bonus strategy for archers is it makes them much more useful for times when you fall behind other civs in technology and they are attacking you with knights or worse. Even just the basic archer defending a city with triple city defense is very reliable, to say nothing of the devastation of these upgraded to longbowman in the critical areas. For whichever city I want to rush them to, and we know there are periods where other civs are going after city throats, the triple city promoted longbowman is all but invincible. It's going to take cavalry or riflemen to even make a dent. So while I can't say whether or not the SoD's are too interested in archers or longbowmen on hills, I can say they will be useless for those that want to take over your cities. Now if only we had a unit with a resource defense bonus
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axemen- Strength bonus followed by melee bonus. This alone will solve most barb problems in the crucial period for the barbs to affect you.
swordsmen - city raider bonuses for first two promotions. Great for wiping out the barb cities, and will be useful should you ever want to attack an enemy civ that has nothing but archers in their cities.
BTW, one little tidbit I bumped into on the last game. I had a situation where a barb lion appeared from a peninsula. My capitol was on the land end of the peninsula, so there was no way it could get away without my seeing it. There were three hexes where he came from that I couldn't see. When I sent a unit in there to eliminate him later (maybe 10 turns later) he was gone! There weren't any civs that could have eliminated him, because nobody could skirt my borders to get there and nobody was even close to caravels.
