kasumi

I think Saleh is pretty solid as a prepromote unit - which means if you don't want to bother training Ewan from scratch or trained Lute and Arthur, Saleh is pretty solid unit. However, putting this equal (all in the same level and promoted), I think the other three had some winning edge over Saleh? Can't say much on stat wise though. (I mean, for example, everyone basically said that Colm is pretty weak but in my game Colm had a whopping 17str right after promoted, so...)

I usually go for the usual ones *perhaps boring though* : Colm/Neimi, Seth/Eirika, Amelia/Franz, Arthur/Lute, Joshua/Natasha, Gerik/Marisa...although I did this purely without counting the support effects though.

I prefer to promote Cormag first, just because he is much more durable than Tana. He can take a few round barraged by archers in my game, which is pretty handy.

Storyline wise, I did prefer Eirika's route a bit; just because it's a better transition from the main storyline. But subjectively, Ephraim's route > any route in FE8 because Ephraim > all. And ransacking the whole capital with a few people compared to playing messenger? Yeah. But my natural first choice when I first played the game is Eirika's route though.

Chapter 31+ basically are Silesia arc huh. Thank you so much for the chapter! Keep up the good work.

Yes, it works, and yes, as the above people said, you can always abandon the castle - but I manage to repel them without leaving the castle sometimes. Use Fin to lure out the enemies bit by bit and weaken them (he can sometimes oneshot the weaker enemies) - and get Leaf to help finish them. If Leaf has the Light Sword, you can basically take some range and weaken those SwordArmors. Have Nanna help too if she was decently equipped (I think she inherited Earth Sword, which sometimes I use when she got low health so she can heal while attacking - although most of the time the damage is not very good), but mainly use her to heal.

Fin and Nanna too? HOW COME? Do you pretty much always leave them unused or something? Because my Fin was one of my versatile unit as he dodges like crazy, and there's also brave lance. And Nanna too, though it depends on her father, but still...

If you keep having difficulty in keeping things alive, always use the lure and draw tactics. Yes, it's slow, but it's safe. Have your mounted units that can withstand some damage to move to the front line, and retreat bit by bit, then ambush. Once you get to spam some exp with healing/teleporting trick, you no longer need to use this tactic. Faring in arena helps as well - use the changing weapon trick to help chances of winning. As above posters had said, FE4 shouldn't come as difficult if you know what are you facing and do the right preparation and tactics. I found that only the first chapter is difficult. Of course, assuming you play in emulator you really should spam the save state reload stuff.

Thank you so much for the new chapter! I'm glad you're well now :D