Is there any way to indirectly destroy an empire?

[Vapiritapiri]

Like with Japan you can blockade China and occupy some cities when they are at a weak celestial reform point and get em to go boom. But what about other nations like the ottomans where you actually need to peel them apart layer by layer and feed it to puppets to actually get them weaker? After like 10 wars you have probably kicked them out of the balkans and the coast but that's about it.

I read about going full warscore and then taking max money from them, then attacking their ally and then doing the same thing again to get them bankrupt, does that work?

 

[nobodyinparticular]

I read about going full warscore and then taking max money from them, then attacking their ally and then doing the same thing again to get them bankrupt, does that work?

Yes, pilfering their treasury a couple times to accumulate debt will hurt them. Also by only taking cash and not land they will not gain revanchism (which give some pretty generous modifiers). Rapidly going to war with them again will also make them suffer more because of looting, devastation, war exhaustion, manpower depletion... what can be a big problem with the Ottomans though is that other tags will not always be willing or able to join in on the gank even if you crush them. Too often have I beaten the Ottomans as Austria/Hungary/Poland/Russia and then the Mamluks declare on them, only to lose because the Ottomans have better army quality and will very quickly get their troop count back up through slackening, hiring mercs and janissaries.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

Not sure what you are referring to with indirect.
The collapse of Ming is a special event only for them.

If you don't want to take the land yourself you can force them to release nations. It is worse than taking the land for yourself and you still need to fight them directly (which seems what you willing to do given your last sentences).

Getting a nation to completly collapse with minimal outside interference is basically impossible. You can try to support rebels (which in my experience will do nothing since any country will have enough time to crush these rebels). You could try and cheese that though by going to war and crushing their armies. Then let War exhaustion build up until separatist rebels spawn (only in certain provinces). Then if you carefully avoid these rebels and let them siege enough land you can break the country. This will take you a very long time and might not even succeed, but it's the only way I can com up with at the moment.