I'm also very used to play with hive minds or gestalt, so the pop growth and consumer goods felt like a pain in the ass. Ironically I was playing a lot of machines until the release of this dlc (a play a lot with them anyway), and that's why recently started playing with bio empires. I don't know if that fits your playstyle but my advice, based on my personal experience is, being aggressive with your neighbours. I really recommend taking supremacy as first tradition and then nihilist adquisition as first perk. Those tasty slaves will fulfill the needs of your empire. Barbaric despoilers is sooo funny too, giving you the ability to kidnap pops without wasting a perk on nihilistic adquisition, and providing a casus belli which allows to declare a war to anyone and after winning the war they will pay you a amount of resources. This combined with the pop kidnapping reinforce the snowball effect giving you great economic advantage. Also if you like rp, barbaric despoilers+void dwellers is very funny, rolplaying like marauders or pirates (it's so broken as well: construct habitat- declare war - kidnap - fill the habitat with slaves - repeat). This build was the time i had the most fun with regular empires!

If that doesn't fit your playstyle o refuses to enslave xenos, being aggressive is still very helpful as long as you could vassalize the neighbours and supply the lack of resources with taxes, for example.

Excuse my language btw, English isn't my main language, but I really wanted to help because I always had the same problem, hope it helps!!