You can have it all if you want, maenads, gorgon, E9 N6 bless, decent scales, rapid early expansion. Just experiment with pretender design. Obviously you are going with the gorgon...
Those revelers that Folket highlighted are indeed excellent for early expansion.
Does having revelers/Pans in the same province increase maenad production? I recruited my 1st Pan and had up to 10 revelers in the same province with turmoil 3, I got over 30 maenads in 1 turn. Or did I just get lucky?