Why Does the AI steal my puppet?

[Mr_Dimento]

I completely take over Italy as France by myself, and the AI only took over Ethiopia. How come they get to puppet Italy in Rome? How does that make any sense?
SAD! How can I form the EU now?

 

[shachazhul]

Welcome to the HOI4 peace conferences. Where you can single-handedly defeat and occupy Central Powers as Soviet Union and USA/UK will still be able to release Ukraine/Belarus from Eastern Poland or even make some major puppets. There is no way around it, if you want to take a lot of territory you should make a puppet first, and then annex it via autonomy system, which of course is very PP hungry. Peace conferences need a serious rework, that's for sure.