I'm in 1.6.4, and as in past I always stay 'vanilla' till I have the basic farms established and a decent looking base built. This usually takes a week or so. Since using TiC I then proceed to go mental tearing up my mine and stocking up on resources, before TiC I'd jump to a quarry and a basic automated processing setup, macerator/pulverisor to furnace to chest. After about a week or so of stocking I clean it all out and jump as far up the tech tree as I can. So about 2 weeks.