How to deal with early game monsters?

The only game setup option I set to 'easy' is 'Monsters'.  

Otherwise like you say - lots of monsters early on that are really hard to deal with. 

Question. Do you get any less experience for lower level monsters?

N/A

Sounds like you are attacking monsters before you are ready. Avoid creatures like Ongr and the giant skeleton. If they come too close, you should fortify that city with your best units, so that if the big monster attacks, you get your best army bolstered with city defenders. Also, putting up walls around a fortress (and a command post) gives your defenders huge bonuses in combat.

Metal shields are a significant achievement, but boar spears might be a bigger one. Get to blacksmithing ASAP, preferably along with Cooperation. Groups (4 members) with boar spears are very versatile and effective additions to your armies.

If you have crystal income, mages are even better. Just get to Enchantment and you can field units with magic staves, which are generally the best ranged attack you can get.

The Terraforming Mod has spells that allow you to turn the terrain into defensive barriers.

yeah, I mean....maybe strong early game monsters is just something for the elite FE players. My cities are constantly being swarmed by these things, and defense requires me to devote my entire production capacity to troops, which lets other AIs pull ahead.

As for the metal things, I'd do that if I could, but because of my inability to clear monsters away from towns and nodes, I'm often unable to secure reliable sources of metal. Am going to go with what a previous poster said, and put monster difficulty on easy. I'll settle for tons and tons of monsters which are easy to defeat, and challenging AIs for the magical war I so crave.

As for mods... I've read that they reduce game stability, so I'm content playing the vanilla game. Haven't had any crashes since I turned that "use mods" checkbox off.

First off: no, the AI does not have as much trouble with monsters. On the other hand, those power rankings aren't always a good indication of strength. 26 on turn 107 seems low though. What have you been doing so far?

Different monsters require different strategies: some have special immunities, like the Banshee or Ophidian, some have ranged attacks or powerful spells and should be rushed and taken out asap, while others like Ongr are powerful melee creatures. You can debuff those with spells like Slow and Curse, attack them from range and/or sacrifice some of your weak units.

In any case, always read the description of monsters first. Some abilities can be really nasty. You might be able to take on an Epic skeleton but get Butchered by some Medium undead dudes.

I found out that world difficulty on anything above challenging makes the monsters ignore the AI players apparently
https://forums.elementalgame.com/435380/page/1/

I hunt down weak monsters.  It feels weak and cowardly, but it keeps me alive while I grow.  I keep my heroes together in one army until I have enough troops built to have a sovereign with troops and an army with both heroes and troops.  I work my way up with that first army to having a Medium army rating.  I beeline to Drills to have a bigger army size.  Then, I should be able to clear out a space safe enough to put a city.  I try to keep the borders from expanding and waking up Strong monsters.    After that, I chase monsters internally with one army and clear out city locations with the other.

One of my big changes in gameplay was making my capital a Fortress if appropriate.  Getting troops out sooner and bigger makes life easier for my heroes.  I also use a Sovereign with Heal, which I find very helpful in early battles.

I don't know if it is the best way, but it is the way I have found that woks for me, most of the time.  If I can get that first army up to Medium, I feel I have a chance.

I don't think this is accurate.

There are AI bugs that make the monsters less likely to attack AI units and cities in general. This is based on Brad's feedback. The forum link you left has someone say they think it's based on difficulty level, and that 'Brad said something like this.' Pretty sure he said the monsters don't attack AI units reliably because of simultaneous turns being taken by AI players and monsters.

Brad paraphrase from memory: "They are literally chasing each other."

Monsters attacking cities is a bug where monsters will approach cities fully intending to attack, but a bug comes up when a monster wants to attack a city that is ADJACENT, leading the monster to approach for attack but then usually fail to execute the attack action. This is again based on what Brad has said on these forums.

Could be more going on, but I don't believe difficulty makes a difference other than increasing monster levels and making them more 'confident' in their attack odds.

So in other words, monsters are generally less likely to attack the AI, but will. Enemy AI units do get killed, I've seen it, and enemy AI cities can get razed (seen it many times). If you have the monsters way tougher than the AI, you will likely notice the AI suddenly having much more monster trouble. But not as much as you will.

well I'm sorry, perhaps I'm not right but I don't agree.

in my experience the AI settled cities right beside lots of monsters (about 5 in 2 movement range) including insane ones and as soon as I took the city, it took all in all about 3 turns for it to be razed. (couldn't clear those monsters, too high level)

that's what I saw with my very own eyes, I can't talk about the rest

A: Monsters are less likely to attack the AI on higher difficulty levels, as Davrovana said. I don't know anything about the actual numbers, but monsters aren't even guaranteed to attack the human player, so I assume the chances of monsters attacking/moving towards the AI range between 30-70% (depending on difficulty).

B: In my experience, monsters 'prefer' to chase moving targets. They will only attack cities if there are no units close by. 

C: Because of the AI movement bug described by Frogboy, monsters have trouble actually eliminating those units. Meaning AI units can be around for a long time, usually long enough for the city to produce a new unit.

If B is true, A,B and C combined ensure a monster attack on an AI city is very, very rare. You probably won't see one in an average game.

Something else I noticed from your OP is that the two monsters you mentioned, the giant skeleton and Ungr, are random events.  Your monster setting may be fine, just set your random events to a lower setting.

i may be wrong, but I seem to recall those two events happening in a recent game of mine.