Yes, I did it and it was probably my most fun game of EU4 in 550+ hours. I used the Purple Phoenix Arise mod which didn't seem to need the DLC. Worth noting that that mod is no longer updated, if you want to use it (which I recommend, I really love it) the you have to roll back to patch 1.6.2. Yes, I did and it was incredibly fun.
Thus, ideally, you need to pick CCR or Diplo annexation, and use one of them exclusivly. But what I realised was that if you go something like diplo-religous-influce-admin-quality, you can stack a very high dcr. Even without any national ideas or missions you can get something like (25+5+15+10) which is 55 percent diplo cost reduction. I bet ifYup. I paid like 40€ for base game, and all DLC, and that's expensive, because I didn't want to wait for a bundle with last 3 DLCs, so I paid like 8€ each for the newest ones, and 15 for bundle with everything before emperor. I don't get people who complain this game is expensive.jSK5s.