It will likely take you a good deal of time to get your Link ratings up to where you have a matching total power to Illusio’s. This is especially true if you take the necessary months to locate all the ‘right’ matches you can for your Warriors. Be forewarned- there are a number of Warriors you can have whose ideal Pokemon aren’t showing up yet, so don’t push too hard for it. Particularly, you’re unlikely to find anyone for that Bug/Ice trainer with the Spheal you picked up earlier, and you’ve probably had a few shots at some Electric/Water specialists- most of those won’t be matchable to a perfect partner yet either.
This shouldn’t be too much of an issue, though- you’ve already got three slots filled for certain, between yourself, Oichi, and whichever Warrior you picked up who came with a Starly or Ruffelet- and that’s half your total force. It’s around this point you’re likely to start noticing a few odd problems inherent to the way this type of combat and ‘leveling’ system works with Pokemon.
The first obvious hurdle here is Pichu. As a pokemon that originally evolved via a strong relationship with its trainer, here it requires a strong relationship with its Warrior. Given that some early-birds like Charmander will evolve around the early 30's in terms of Link %- which substitutes for a high loyalty- the requirements for Pichu, which are well in excess of 50%, are pretty exorbitant. For this reason, any warrior whose ideal match is a Pichu should probably be relegated to your back lines. If you intend their partner to reach its evolution, you should also manually train the Warriors in that location, so that you can ensure the exceedingly frail and not terribly powerful mouse gets as many knock-out blows as possible- but given that Pikachu isn’t a terribly strong ‘mon anyways, this is probably more trouble than it’s worth- a bit sad considering its typical mascot status.
The other hurdle you’re likely to be facing is Eevee- while Oichi’s Jigglypuff is a massive sack of hit points that winds up with very strong defenses because of that, has the interesting Lullaby utility, and wields Double-Slap, guaranteeing a decent bit of damage even against Rock and Steel types, your Eevee is sadly a touch on the weak side. Its Range is nice and the Celebrate ability is amazing when it triggers, granting you an extra turn with Eevee, but Quick Attack isn’t a remarkable attack at all, since ‘priority’ doesn’t mean anything in Conquest. What’s more, Eevee’s defenses are decent but that’s all, and its offense is poor, particularly with Quick Attack’s melee-only reach. This is the point where I’d advise picking up a new pokemon for your main character- or possibly even two so you have alternatives. Sewaddle can be a useful choice for now, as its evolved form, Swadloon, packs the impressive Razor Leaf that launches a three-square-long attack with an increased chance of critical hits. This is helped by Sewaddle’s line being Gold-medal worthy for your main character. Also of note is Mareep, another Gold-medaller, which has very strong defenses and packs a good punch- while Flaafy’s Discharge attack can be a double-edged sword, always attacking everything adjacent and directly diagonal to Flaafy, the possibility of having Disrupt as its ability and cutting the accuracy of all the enemy’s forces can’t be ignored and makes Mareep/Flaafy a deadly brawler.
