If I were to do it again, and I'd rather not as I'm ninety days into my latest Rise from the Ashes run and I want to get somewhere with it, I might even let Mae wait. I don't usually end up getting enough pistols to get that income anytime soon anyway, and all Mae is doing for me now is getting oggled by Roo when she gets her measly 25 RD income--and aging. I might just get the Valkria, as she's pretty much guaranteed to be a decent Arena choice, put off the combat that includes the sex slave and leave Talika in Kasey's Park for a while too. I'm going to have to take out the ones that prevent/inhibit the caravans soon enough and I think that's all I can handle as I consider Rebecca an early must-have as well and Juno and Michelle are gimmies and I like them.
I've waited on Mae before as well but it doesn't take that long to get enough stuff for Belial guns even if you rely exclusively on drops and never craft anything so I just always grab her now.
I did stumble into an option for manipulation recently that I hadn't really tried before and I'm not sure how well it would translate to a rise from the ashes start since your manipulation is not starting off high.
My previous game I started with 85 manipulation but only 35 charm and was kind of fumbling around trying to figure out how to make progress with the randoms who despised me without having to rely on charm checks. Turns out just requesting sex in a demanding manner works pretty frequently (manipulation check) even if they hate you and without any prep work on them (no gifts, no compliments, not even a bath together). They even start with positive arousal.
I usually had to stop shortly after I started when their arousal went negative but it was still enough to pretty reliably boost happiness and affection on girls who hated me without boosting respect or anything else with them first. It was also giving me manipulation skill increases occasionally.
I didn't try it before I had fully upgraded my bedroom and living room so I suspect the passive bonuses combined with such a high manipulation are why it was working so well, but I imagine if you cycle through the girls once you have the house upgrades you would still occasionally get a success.
By contrast, all attempts I made at seduction and bondage were complete failures with the girls always failing every charm or manipulation check, always starting with negative arousal, and always hating me even more when I was done than when I started.
I was intentionally avoiding my usual process of first building respect to 20 with them and then doing compliments and seduction because for randoms I'm trying to break quickly it's just too slow. It needs to work at 0 respect when they hate me or it's not going to happen.