Bronze working tech requires (according to wiki):
Crafting (125) + Mining (200) + Bronze Working (400) = 725
Rantine (Hero) = 180 Hammers
3 Strength, Melee, Orcish, +25% to melee
Archery tech requires:
Exploration (125) + Hunting (300) + Archery (300) = 725
Gilden (hero) = 120 Hammers
5/6 Strength, Archer, Elven, Dexterous (+1 Str, making 6/6), 1 first strikes
So your counter to a 6/6 archery unit with first strike and double movement + increased defense in forests is a 3 str melee hero with some broken fire resist and which builds 50% slower than the unit it's supposed to counter.
Gilden can also solo Orthas, who is usually out about the same time. The +1 str goes even further to cripple the defensive options against Gilden.
Grigori requires same tech path in order to get archers, so 725 beakers.
Archer (Upgraded from Adventurer)
2/4, 1 first strike, 25% city defense, 25% hills defense bonus.
So unfortunately, units strengths are not directly multiplicative. In other words, 2 3 strength units are not as good, by a long shot, as 1 6 strength unit (7 if you farmed Orthas). The saving grace in this case is it's likely that, so long as the only thing attacking you is Gilden, your fortified adventurer archer in your city likely has enough of a defensive boost to stand off a low level Gilden. While I haven't tested the timings, it's my bet that out of the gate, Gilden couldn't win, but by reaching level 6/7 by farming animals and barbarians for a few turns the adventurers will be outpowered. Remember each combat upgrade is 20% of base 6, while for your adventurers, it's base 4. Also, your best case scenario in this case is defense. You're still not going to be able to kill Gilden like this.
Dovelio are going to require workers to make use of any metals, and there's no real guarantee they are going to have it under their starting city. Going workers this early leaves you extremely vulnerable to outproduction by higher population cities/expansions, and does nothing to defend against any kind of early game warrior rush. Most cases I've seen of early workers just degrade to the worker sitting in base while opponents are able to pillage unchallenged with superior armies, and perhaps even losing your main city by lack of sufficient defense.
Horseback riding is 125 + 200 + 300 = 626, 100 beakers less than archery. However, you need to build a stables (100 hammers) plus the cost for your horses (60 each), which puts you over the production but under the tech. At best, you gain a few turns on gilden, and have 1-2 horses out in time to defend against him. Horses don't get defense modifiers, so fortifying in base does nothing for your cause. You're still dealing with a number of weaker units to defeat a stronger one, and if gilden brings any sort of backup you're going to be really throwing units at him in order to win. I just don't see the cost-effectiveness of this defense. Not to mention, this is perhaps the most extreme example of a counter one can come up with. You are talking about the Civ that specializes in archery units against the civ that specializes in cavalry units. It should be horribly lopsided in favor of Hippus, but it really really isn't, it's actually quite close. That just sounds wrong to me, since there are so many civs that don't have these same sort of counters.
Larger maps don't always guarantee far starting positions, and is really just running away from the balance problem anyway, as it shouldn't be necessary to play 3 player FFA's on huge maps in case someone decides to go elves and Gilden rush.
There just doesn't seem to be a reasonable counter to mass producing warriors until archery, getting gilden, and then controlling the entire map from there. It takes entirely too long to get the next best unit or hero counter to Gilden.
