Henchmen are great. However they have some issues and bugs resulting from restrictions placed on them to avoid exploits. I believe most have been posted elsewhere in separate threads, but I'm trying to unify this.

Issues:

1. They can't be mounted. This is a severe penalty because any army with henchmen will have their mobility reduced, unless you find boots of speed (or celerity or whatever they're called). Moving armies from one side to the other is sort of a hassle, more so when you're loosing movement points due to one single unit.

2. They can't be equipped with ranged weapons, given to them by other heroes. Ranged weapons would be the best for these units, especially when they start and they're weak, especially since I want them for their buffing abilities not to fight the enemy head on.

3. They can't use cloaks either. In all three cases the items gifted to them disappear.

4. They don't die after being defeated, like they're supposed too. (I like this, but I understand the reasoning for having them die permanently, to differentiate them from "real" heroes)

I understand that since Henchmen are equipped on creation using city production and not by using coins, having them start with and equip items that could then be shared with the heroes would be an exploit of the "Shop" economy system. However, the current implementation leads to more gameplay problems (at least when I play).

One possible solution is to limit cities to the production of "naked" henchmen and then have to buy all of the equipment you want them to wear using the regular shops. This kind of sucks because it's expensive to equip a hero, but gameplaywise it seems that it would lead to less problems than the restrictions currently in place. Then I would lift all restrictions to share and equip items so they can trade with any hero and equip anything heroes can.

What do you guys and gals think? Any comments or suggestions or other bugs on henchmen you've experienced would be appreciated.