Manipulate actually isn't that hard to raise if you know the trick to it. Explain Chores and Explain Sex Duties is the key. The problem is there's kind of a limited window of opportunity for those to work right. Your chance of success is better if their willpower is low, but not too low or it's guaranteed not to work. Affection also can't be too high or it doesn't work. So relatively early on I tend to repeatedly explain chores and sex duties to anyone with willpower in about the 30-50 range with amiable or worse affection and then fix the inevitably pissed off attitudes with pool parties, but not so many that they start to love me until I hit 90 manipulate. Then I can boost it further with classes and books.As mentioned before, I personally prefer to pick no background at all and just pour points directly on intelligence and manipulate skill, because those are very useful and very difficult to max out any other way.
I follow similar logic with charm and boost it via caress to something ending in a 4 or a 9 and then buy it up to 89 at the doctor's office before taking any classes or reading any books that boost charm.
I find bondage and flagellation more useful to raise at character creation if I'm going to boost sex related stuff since it's very tough to raise either of those without spending a LOT of time and money at the Velvet room (where you can boost both to 70 if you're persistent). Taking slaver skill classes is really the only way to do that so alternatively I will boost copulation and/or kissing instead.
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