SimpleEnigma

When should I start promoting units to their advanced class? Not until they reach level 20 of their base class right?

I'm getting nervous about Chrom and the marriage thing. I didn't realize there were so few he could marry and of the 3 I currently have in my party, Sumia and Sully are already married to MU and Virion respectively, and Maribelle doesn't seem particularly useful, especially having her paired to Chrom. Will there be another female character he can marry that pops up soon enough? I've gotten 2 more female companions since but none are even eligible to even build Support with him :( Getting the sense I shoulda followed the story's wishes and paired Sumia with Chrom and waited for Cordelia to pair with MU (except I didn't know she was coming).

I didn't recruit him and I don't think I've even run into him. Name doesn't sound familiar. Maybe I will run into him soon.

So a couple weekends ago I picked up on of those cool Zelda 3DS XL bundles and after I beat Zelda I decided it was finally time to check out Fire Emblem. I'd seen friends play Fire Emblem and I've always liked turn based tactical games like XCOM and Civilization. Anyways, I'm really enjoying Awakening and I think I have myself on decent footing for my first play though (technically my second as I abandoned my first save when I learned letting Frederick carry me through the first chapters did not set me up for success). However I'm pretty clueless on how to advance my team properly and not screw myself late game. Namely I'm unsure if I should focus on my favorite 10 or so companions and ignore everyone else, or if I should do all I can to keep everyone in fighting shape. Also should I bother with healers? They seem pretty worthless in pairs which is how I've been keeping my team. I've completed Chapter 6 I believe and the first 2 paralogues (and a couple random spawn battles). After a very tough Chapter 5, my 'A team' has been stomping the last few battles handily, but I tried to get some of my scrubs some experience in a random battle and they struggled pretty hard. Edit: Forgot to say I'm playing on Classic Hard. I'd love some tips and suggestions going forward but please no spoilers or complete walkthroughs (for example "Pair X and Y, P and Q, etc and you will beat the game no prob). Some general advice would be awesome. Here's how my team looks so far: As you may notice my main strategy has been to pair high damage companions with mounted units to burst down targets while using my tankier and/or slower units to cover them and make sure they don't get collapsed on.