Started an Altarian game in the latest beta and researched up to the Henchmen tech. They're vastly improved (as is, by the way, the unit design screen - traits are laid out far better), mainly because they can now have mounts. So I'm thrilled with that & can't wait until I have a few of the little buggers running around and levelling up. Even back when they were buggy I had a level 17 guy (who had started out a support unit to one of my proper heroes) charging around the scrapyard tearing up units of scrap golems with Sarog's Axe, so I can only imagine what the new and improved ones will do!
However, two minor bugs I encountered: if I design a new Henchman unit, it doesn't appear in the list of available units, although if I edit an existing henchman with a new name it does appear as a new unit, so, workaround sorted. This has been reported before with henchmen and some of the other special unit types, so I'm sure you guys already have it on your to-do list, just noting that it's still happening.
The other is that while the three pre-designed henchmen are now attached to the Henchmen tech, several others that I designed in previous versions became available when I researched Heroes - in fact, I already had one in the build queue before I noticed there was a separate Henchmen tech now!
Oh, and I'll upload some saves here later when I'm back on my other PC, as aside from the bug report the game generated the perfect map - lots of city sites, some with essence and some without, level-appropriate monsters (although Resoln still somehow got wiped early) and plenty of the starting-level quests that the Altarians in particular need.