I wrote something of a
tutorial on this a while back (under Empire Management). The search function on here seems to miss a lot of stuff. Here's the last part of my tutorial to save you time.
"This article came about because of COTM48 with the Byzantines on Demi-God. I now prefer a far simpler strategy... and it seems far more effective.
1. Build your settler factory.
2. Build warriors in most of your other towns... maybe a settler at some point... and a very, very small handful of workers at some point also... but mostly warriors.
3. Leave warriors in your towns only if you need them as military police, otherwise send your warriors out. Try to have them move in teams of at least 2.
4. Attack an encampment only when you have two warriors that can attack.
5. Try to attack horseman as much as possible, and try to get horseman to attack you as little as possible.
6. Try to use the mountains to "keep an eye" on as much territory as possible, so few new encampments pop up.
7. Try to use some warriors to found "settler corridors"... lanes or areas that all look "light " instead of "fogged" with warriors standing nearby. Your settlers can travel down such a path with little to no fear of getting sacked immediately by an unexpected barbarian... and can found a town in an instant (usually) if a barbarian pops nearby.
8. When the middle age rush appears (hordes instantly appear when you hit the middle ages) don't even and try and fight them. On lower levels you might have enough of an army to defeat them. On higher levels, forget it... the middle age hordes come too early (at least for COTM 48 they did). Buy luxuries, technology, city improvements, more warriors... whatever you can from the AIs or *find a banker*. Sell a tribe 400 gold for 19 gpt or something like that and take smaller hits from the barbarians than you would have otherwise and get your cash back.
So, basically the strategy comes as forget culture except if you really, really need it on some border town. Forget building lots of early workers... build a skelton crew of workers if say you need to build the Great Library and basically no more. Pump out those settlers, but not too many or too fast. *Build WARRIORS (not spearman, not archers, not catapults) like crazy*. If you get iron soon enough you might successfully do some warrior upgrades and have some swordsman... but if you don't... don't worry... you only really need warriors... just a good number of them. This strategy I bet will almost always work, because it gives you sufficient numbers fast... since warriors cost only 10 shields to build AND barbarian warriors and horseman have only 2 hit points... so a regular warrior on the attack has the advantage over a barbarian warrior or horseman. Basically, I'd say to build warriors and settlers and go hunting/scouting for barbarians (you might need a curragh or two for some contacts along the way... of course). Try COTM48 with the Byzantines as a game for this."
I think the May COTM with the Vikings on Deity also had you on an island isolated with raging barbies. Thing is, on Deity level you get NO combat bonuses against barbies, while on Demi-God level you get a 50% combat bonus, and I believe it's 100% on Emperor level. To perhaps clarify 7. a bit, you don't strictly need an escort for your settlers, in the sense that you don't necessarily need a unit on top of the settler IF you have military units *around* the settler on all sides to bust the fog. You have more fog busted this way also, and as long as a square remains light, no new encampment can pop up there. Best of luck.
