Lemonade?
Anyway, it seems like it's important for the character to be useful in combat. That's not unreasonable, though it is easy to be useless in combat while playing lots of non-sorcerous characters.
Counterspells: Never seen these used in combat.
Curses: I've never seen the Ill-Fortune family cast and for good reason in my mind - they suck a ton, unless, of course, you just want to mess with people rather than kill them. Gelid Bones and Weapon Curse are the two that should see play, though Calm of the Adept is highly restricted in our campaign.
Divination: Never seen used in combat. Visions completely changes adventuring.
Hypnotism: Combat use? Not so much, except to take control of party members who have been mind controlled by the baddies. I don't see the harping on hit die limits. You don't have to mess with the powerful NPCs to get the job done.
Nature Magic: How is this not exceedingly strong at low levels? I have a character with a frickin' scorpion as an animal ally who had to carry most of the fighting. Try having a real animal ally. Losing XP is dumb as hell as a mechanic, but it's not the end of the world. Stuff (animals in this case) take up space and that's important even in higher level battles where the animals can't inflict any damage.
Necromancy: Stuff takes up space. Other than tactical combat uses of Raise Corpse, I can't see much combat use until you get to the "you die [maybe]" spells.
Oriental Magic: Heavily restricted in our campaign, so I don't know how effective it is.
Prestidigitation: Telekinesis and Greater are bizarre in that the descriptions explain basically a single effect that is incredibly narrow, though, of course the whole point of these spells is to fling alchemical bombs and poisons; assuming you have such, which seems to be the assumption for sorcerers in Conan, then you have a delivery system for your fireballs/whatever. Conjuring is the real telekinesis and a wonderfully flexible spell, if not a good combat one. Blast Wave has minor random tactical uses. Conjure Item is a lot more interesting after I bothered to read what it does, though the impact in combat is indirect. Deflection sounds unlikely to work since exceeding attack rolls is really hard. Basically, not a good combat style but a great general use style.
Summoning: Irrelevant IMO as whatever you do is going to be broken.
Overall:
Sure, there's very little combat punch in sorcery. That seems to be the point. If there were, everyone would play sorcerers. Nature is the obvious style if you feel the need to be involved in combat at lower levels, probably replaced by alchemy and Prestidigitation at mid levels, and Necromancy at higher levels though it depends upon what the GM allows and throws at you.
Meanwhile, outside of combat, sorcerers are a complete terror. If you want to be effective in combat, play a barbarian. If you want to do stuff no one else can do, play a scholar who does magic. I think it's way too much to expect sorcerers to completely overshadow fightery types.
