EdgeOfDreams

You can choose not to replenish a specific battalion if you do your replenishing through the Marketplace menu. When it prompts you, "Do you want to replenish five battalions?" or whatever, say "No", then go to the Marketplace menu and choose the specific ones you want to replenish. Then, for the Battalion Vantage/Wrath combo, if you're careful with how you position and use that unit, it's possible for their battalion to stay in the red zone for several battles in a row.

One piece of data I have definitely confirmed: the star level of food determines how many times you have to feed the animal before you get a reward. More stars = fewer feedings to get one ore. Also, fish and meat give rewards faster than vegetables. A 5-star vegetable is equivalent to a 4-star fish for quantity purposes. If you want to collect data and keep the type of food constant, catching 99 bullhead on a Fistful of Fish day is probably your best bet. 5-Star fish give one ore for every two fish. I'm still gathering data for ore quality and whether or not it varies depending on the type of food or breed of animal. However, I can say that after 300+ ores, I have not gotten a single Umbral Steel or Agarthium from the animals. I'd be that those two ores are simply not available.

You heard wrong. You do not get all spent renown back. You carry over any unspent renown. You also get a bonus amount of renown based on the difficulty of the last playthrough you beat and the total number of playthroughs you have completed. The fastest way to rack up NG+ renown is repeated speedruns. On Normal + Casual, you can spend a bit of renown at the start to get Byleth's Authority and Sword skill up, equip Byleth with a strong battalion, and proceed to solo the entire game. Skipping all cutscenes, combat animations, free days, and instruction means you can complete a run in less than 5 hours, maybe as little as 2 hours. Just before the end of the game, spend all your money on cheap seeds, then sacrifice everything in your storehouse to the pagan altar.

Neither Marianne nor Bernadetta strike me as having mere social anxiety as their primary issue. For Marianne, she's depressed and suicidal, which causes her to be socially withdrawn. For Bernadetta, she's paranoid, agoraphobic, and experiencing panic attacks and/or PTSD episodes. It's easy to read Bernadetta's dialogue as massively over the top, but if you've ever spent time around someone with untreated trauma of similar severity, you may recognize that it's not really all that exaggerated.

Her Strength score doesn't matter for Mortal Savant. She could have zero Strength and still make the build work well enough. When she's attacking with a Levin Sword or Hexblade, her Magic stat is used for the damage calculation. Since Hexblade is a Combat Art, she won't be doubling anyway, so the weight of the sword doesn't matter. The class path for this build is most likely Monk -> Mage (master for Fiendish Blow) -> Warlock or Bishop -> Mortal Savant, so she never needs to spend time in a class where her Strength score matters.

Dorothea as Mortal Savant or Pegasus/Falcon Knight can make excellent use of Levin Sword+ for range and a Silver Sword+ comboed with Hexblade for big hits. Because Ferdinand has Strengths in Sword, Lance, and Axe, it's entirely possible to qualify him for Wyvern Lord and still have enough ranks in Sword or Lance to use those weapons effectively. If you want to get really crazy and don't mind not having a dancer, Wyvern Lord Ferdinand with Alert Stance+, Sword Prowess, Sword Avoid +20, and an Evasion Ring is silly fun as a dodge tank.

Linhardt/Leonie - paralogue for The Inexhaustible (sacred version of a Brave Bow+)

An Authority-focused class that isn't limited to Lords. Give them more Gambit uses per battle or the ability to switch battalions mid-battle. A better melee/magic infantry hybrid than Mortal Savant. Give them something that makes mixed physical + magical stats worth having. A jack-of-all-trades class that requires something like C Rank in a bunch of different skills. Give them stronger weapon-triangle effects or something like that to encourage switching between different weapons or between weapons and spells frequently.

What happens if you have enough support points for the next rank, but the conversation is time-locked? Right now I have Ferdinand with C Support viewed and B Support pending, but can't actually view the B Support conversation yet. The Dex requirement is a non-issue, but I'm not sure if I can get Byleth's Heavy Armor skill up high enough in time.