Early on in a game of Civilization 6, barbarians can be a real threat, or at least a huge nuisance, to a player. Having strategies to deal with these enemies is vital to doing well Civ 6's early game, but one must first understand how barbarians work before developing those plans.
Barbarians encampments will spawn randomly throughout the map, but can only do so in Fog of War areas. This means that any area in Civilization 6 which is not currently in a unit's line of sight is free game for barbarians. Though they are mostly pretty weak, in numbers they can be dangerous.
Essentially, a barbarian encampment will spawn a scout that will proceed to search for the player's city. After finding a city, that scout will return back to the camp and wake it up. This is where things get dangerous, as the barbarian camp will now spawn warriors every turn and continually assault the city until they are wiped out.
There are three main strategies in Civilization 6 players should use when dealing with barbarians, and each has a certain level of risk/reward associated with it. The most common strategy is to simply be aggressive against barbarians. Players should use their own scouts to keep tabs on all nearby barbarian camps and send their first unit to barbarian camps one by one to take them out. Caution is advised, as the spearman guarding the camps is no joke early on, but with some strategy or upgrades, they can be taken down easily.
This is right about in the middle of the risk/reward spectrum, as it will reward the player with unit XP and whatnot and isn't terribly risky. Alternatively, a player can post a warrior by each camp, making sure to kill any scouts that attempt to exit or enter the camp. This is less resource-intensive as the first strategy but doesn't give the player anything other than breathing room.
The final strategy is all risk but can be extremely rewarding if done properly. Barbarians are actually unable to destroy a capital city, so players could let barbarians come and wail on their city, using it as an opportunity to get unit experience and to find inspiration (Archery gets a boost for killing a barbarian with a slinger, and bronze working gets one for killing three barbarians in general). This is very risky though, so new or inexperienced Civ 6 players should probably stick to one of the two strategies above.
Civilization 6 is available now for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.