A few small points.
Units per merchant are limited. That said, if you can get at least one unit of a given type in your squad and are feeling cheesy, you can make use of Sacrifice to "create" more of that unit - Sacrifice can be used to bring a stack total to above the number you started the battle with, and if so then when you end the battle you keep the extra units.
There is a limited number of enemies, which puts a cap on the amount of experience available. That's why high-level challenges in this forum tend to focus on two things: ancient knowledge scrolls and other experience multipliers, and item suppression battles. While item suppression battles are also limited, you can get about ~10% more fights out of the game if you play to try and get as many of those fights as possible.
Distortion magic is, in my opinion, by far the best spell school. You could write a whole article on strategic uses of slow. Or haste. Or trap, or stoneskin, or phantom, or any of a number of other spells in that school. It just gives you a lot of powerful options.
Scrolls can also be "stored" if you want at castles - you can sell scrolls at castles, at which point they'll go out of your spellbook and into the castle shop (just open your spellbook while in the castle screen). Then you can buy that scroll back at a later date when you have room for it if you still want it.
Regarding dying... it will negatively effect your end-game score, if you care about that.
Keeping units alive is often an issue of directing their damage. The "Target" spell helps quite a bit there, as does simply knowing how the AI chooses who to attack. Stoneskin can be quite useful (particularly on a unit that already has high physical damage resistance, like knights or paladins). Don't feel compelled to enter a battle with 5 stacks - sometimes the best approach really is just one stack if you're trying to avoid losses (plus it levels your pet dragon faster).
Oh - and the wall is actually quite excellent if used strategically. Don't try to use it to totally wall off your troops; instead, try to use it to direct enemies away from your fragile ranged units, towards your buff tank units. If they can still reach some of your troops this turn or the next, odds are good that they'll ignore the wall and walk for the vulnerable units.
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