Just to derail this totally: Has anyone actually found a use for henchmen?
Henchmen are amazing! I use my sovereign and quest-map powerlevel two tiers:
The first set of 4 or 5 I take to level 7 or 8 (takes 1-3 turns depending on the quests you get) and go path of the governor. They'll usually have 3 talents among Loremaster and Merchant, so each one will be worth 1-2 research and 2-5 gildar, plus 2 growth and 15% unrest.
The second set I'll train as border patrol pairs - one swordsman and one fire mage (buy the fire books from Pariden to give them the real talent, not the fake one). I'll get them to level 10-12 each, and put one pair with each defensive army I have. Usually takes 4-5 turns of quest map powerleveling. With the quest map leveling, the swordsmen will have either a Druss Blade or the Maul one and the fire mages will be archmages and able to throw out huge damage fireballs. Even without support troops they'll crush pretty much anything.
The greatest part is that they don't cause xp to be split. I have have a party of my sovereign and 5 of them and it's like I have 6 champions in my army.
See my post
https://forums.elementalgame.com/430502
for an amazing henchman. He eventually got to 90-something attack pre-buffs, and over 600 with the buffs. 2-shot an elemental lord and would 1-shot dragons.