I use Beast Lord, and as I expand across the map, I do find the Familiar very useful as they share my Sovereign's 'Tame' skill.  But yes, he's a delicate wolf especially when first summoned and I have to be exquisitely careful with him.

Its only worth it in rare cases to me.  The most common seems to be using them with the Kraxis faction, since the special faction spell to convert a unit has a 99 turn cooldown (at least as of a few patches ago, don't know if that's been changed) so the only way to use the spell more than once or twice a game is to summon up some familiars.  Each unit with access to that spell is on its own cooldown timer, so the familiar becomes really good (assuming you can get it to survive long enough to cast a touch spell, and you pass the chance for the spell to fail).

I also sometimes used it with factions that need things from a lot of different trees to try out a certain strategy (ie slave spam Magnar with magic artillary to back it up) . . .then I don't want to waste turns on hero techs early on, and they're all dead later, so a familiar can be a good quick way to get an extra caster.  In this case, a "weak" slave with poor / no armor in the army with the familiar will more often draw arrows and spells.

But ya, they tend not to be good enough for me to really play much with them, at least compared to just hiring a champion or using a surrendered faction leader to do the same job.

It's shit.

I often use my familiar with cloud walk to move a second army.  For example, my sovereign will be clearing out a wildlands area with an army, meanwhile my cities are cranking out some pioneers.  Once the wildlands are clear, erect an arcane monolith, then port the pioneers into the new fertile ground.  Granted, that's 130 mana just spent in one go, but by the time I clear out an entire wildlands area that's usually not too unreasonable.

Coupled with a few mediocre defenders, my familiar has been able to hold off quite a bit once it's hit-points are boosted a little.  There are usually only 2-3 archer units in any given attacking army and their initiative is usually terrible.  The familiar only needs to survive a few attacks.  Coupled with some direct damage (flame dart), it can usually whittle down the archer ranks by itself to essentially nullify their threat relatively quickly.

Also as a side note I tend to a) Level my familiar to around level 8-10, b ) build a lot of towns and get several Guild Grocers which makes all units far more survivable. 

Familiar and Imp, both useless imho. Like said earlier they get oneshotted far too easily by enemy archers or mages.

They should have more HP or more armor.

Well...to summerize...the familiar and imp sure seem like they need some kind of boost so that players actaully consider building them, and AI aren't wasting their time by building them...

For now, I find little usefulness too in familiars. They die too fast....seems a waste of time, mana and Sov HP. To improve them, some of these could be added:

- They can receive spells like armor, haste, and all that, so they get more survival, at a mana cost OC.

- Improve their dodge skills, as said before. Maybe some more HP too. Armor? I don't find sense in that, but well...could be an option.

- Make them immortals. If heroes and sovs are...why not their familiar? When they die, they may return to life at 1 HP, or at full HP after a 5 turns-cooldown. This way, there is not so much fear in losing them, and as the time goes by, they can improve their stats and be something of usefulness.

Pretty much my feeling at the current time.  The most fragile of glass cannons.

From what I see they're just glass without the cannon part. 

K, so for both familiars and imps, they're glass canons that can't survive a turn of archers even.

I can understand that the developers don't want to make them too powerful, cause there's nothing worse than having two sovereigns running amuck. However, on the flipside, it's instant death in combat.

Here's my proposal: Give them the Impulsive trait. This way, they can have the guarenteed first action in combat, obtaining some buff or spell out of it before it's destroyed. Multiple turn casts may be a bit tricky...

Do we want these units to have any type of endurance in combat??

There needs to be more summons available to make this strategic approach viable.