How do you deal with food early game as a hivemind?

[Skoga]

I tried snowballing by colonizing a few planets early, I had like 10 food districts in total in the first 5 years and it still wasn't nearly enough. How are you supposed to deal with food as a hivemind? I picked permutation pools and one mind to unity rush + pop growth rush but the food is a big problem

[yuzhonglu]

Play as a terravore and eat planets.

[Skoga]

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

Play as a terravore and eat planets.

Why would I eat planets to lower my economy in the longterm? Also I would like to be able to do diplomacy

[mr steal ur spell]

what origin are you playing? What planet types are your pops starting on? Wet planets are best for food.

You also have traits to boost your food production if you are lacking a little food, but if you happen to have lots of energy you can build automation buildings to bridge any worker shortages (or send the workers to make more food somewhere else).

[yuzhonglu]

Conquer neighbors for econ. Eat planets to get the alloys and minerals to snowball, and as terravore you use minerals not food. Even better with bioships.

But if you want to do diplo and play a regular empire, start on an ocean world.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Dint forget you need pops to actually work those jobs.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by Skoga:

I tried snowballing by colonizing a few planets early, I had like 10 food districts in total in the first 5 years and it still wasn't nearly enough. How are you supposed to deal with food as a hivemind? I picked permutation pools and one mind to unity rush + pop growth rush but the food is a big problem

Are you playing with biological ships? Because if so then that is the issue causing you to need a lot of food, rather then hive minds.

[adobo]

Specialize a planet for food. It's 20% bonus per district. You'll need to specialize another for trade since resource specialization will add trade upkeep per worker.

[Elgareth]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

Dint forget you need pops to actually work those jobs.

This most likely. Just having the districts or buildings doesn't do anything for you, if noone is working there. Check if your drones aren't working somewhere else. It can be fiddly to get the ratios right while there are a lot of free working slots.
I'd say it's easier to only build one building at a time, once you're at 0 available jobs, that way you know those jobs will be worked soon.