Agreed on making balanced updates. The Rachel bit in this update was quite lengthy (compared to others) and the Sara bit was too. Sasha's wasn't necessarily long, but it obviously adds more time to the update if you are involved there too, and then there's a small Ashley scene as well (longer if you're on the Ashley and Sara route as it merges with Sara's scene). Missing out on one or two of those, especially Rachel and Sara would make for a short update.
Nikki jokes about a harem, but it's just in terms of having her paintings of a bunch of girls on the wall. The real harem bit comes from Sasha though. She says she knows what you've been up to with all the different girls and (for unknown reasons that I can't wait to find out) she says she will help you put them together into a harem. It gives me the impression that the usual question of "why would all the girls agree to it once they know about each other" will be answered in some way by "because of Sasha's influence."
So far, in my main save, I have Carol, Yuki (Carol and Yuki threesome path opened), Ashley, Sara (Ashley and Sara threesome path opened), Nikki (Nikki and Sara threesome path opened), Roxy (Roxy and Nikki threesome path opened), Rachel, Lexi, and Sasha (with Alyssa I guess tied in to this one). If it comes to it, I can split the save at any point, but otherwise, this is the basis of my harem, it's just that Sasha appears to be the only one who knows about the others so far, with the exception of Ashley and Nikki knowing about Sara.