Well, if I haven't already made clear, it's not the critical hits that really get to me - it's the fact that even with them, most of those deaths were ones I could have easily prevented (which I can say about all of them that weren't to Gym Leaders).
And as for Slovakia being my replacement, one thing I noticed is that my team doesn't have the best defense against special attackers (half my team has -Sp Def natures, including both my Water-types, who actually have the two highest Sp Def stats on my team with Australia exceeding Jamaica by one point), and the other two have rather weak Special Defense stats on their own), so something like Muk, with high Special Defense and HP, is a good help for when we're faced with those (except Psychic-types, which I still have Egypt for). And I gave her ThunderPunch to take that Swanna, so that's a bonus.
And i'm not sure what makes you see Pakistan the Klink as "cheap", in fact I was actually very close to selecting it, but had second thoughts. It's not cheap, it's just capable of learning Electric-type attacks and resists most of Skyla's moves, but it doesn't have too many things it can do, either - at least not until Shift Gear.
Lastly, if you haven't seen, you'll see how my Omega Ruby Wedlocke ends this week - I said a while ago that I do defeat Steven, but that's the only thing I will spoil. The rest you'll have to see for yourself. :P