Pffft. I can make a huge cart-based brain in my base, without using any AE.
Of course you can. if you have any kind of basic item transport, what you can control somehow, then you can automate.
Computers are not nececarry either, because you can use redstone.
I am building an efficient furnance (counts the items to avoid coal wasting) in vanilla.I have only size issues ( the house is extremly small to do redstone ).
Thats why i said reasonable size. The vanilla version is pretty big. But of course possible.
Automation is frankly meh. Thinks can be automated with hoppers, block breakers, sensors, block placers etc. in really cool ways.
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If all else fails, there are things like turtles which with a bit of lua know-how can literally allow you to be the richest person on a server without having to log on to actually play the game after a bit of settup.
Hmm... Theres any 1.7 mod (don't needs to be forge) with
pushable(Important part, otherwise its too complex to do whitout slimeblocks) block placer/breaker?
Turtles at least require knowledge.