Maniac
Apolyton Sage
Well in a way we have balanced the hunter with the addition of two mechanics--
ore system (axemen become useable without copper at the same strenght as hunters, so you can upgrade your already experienced warriors)
and seperate attack defense, so the archer is now 2/4 with +25% city defense(i think), the best defensive unit of the t2s.
That doesn't solve the problem at all unfortunately. The problem is not really with the units themselves. It's with the tech tree and techs that give those units. If I can choose between researching hunters or axemen first, considering that researching towards hunters takes much less time and considering that without copper axeman are in almost every way inferior to hunters, the choice is simple. And while hunters and axeman are not the best defensive units, they can do the job just fine and can do many other things on top of that, so the incentive to research archery (or even more: bowyers)is really low.