Its a bug with henchmen (Altar). Its been with us since they made henchmen. I am a bit surprised that the faction specific stuff hasnt been fixed yet. How can one balance a faction that does not work as intended?

Henchmen that you design very often cannot be produced afterwards (they are not in the unitlist)

Henchmen design isn't a biggie to me.  Disappearing is.  

If they can't make it work (or for some reason don't wan't henchies to carry those items) give us a warning and don't let the items to "poof".

As sort of an inverse/converse/whatever of the old line  "Everything not forbidden is compulsory", one principle of software design needs to be "Everything not forbidden is SUPPORTED."

I've outlasted a lot of other cobol programmers by following that, even if it meant I had to forbid more than I would have liked because I didn't have the time to support it properly.  "You can't do that" is much better than "go ahead -- whoops!", and often easier to code & test than "go ahead, it will work".