I am playing a game as USA, and did the Preemptive Intervention national focus for a Puppet war goal against Veneuzela. I completed the focus, declared war with the justification, and beat Venezuela. I saw the option to make Venezuela a puppet in the peace negotiation window, thought I clicked it, but must not have, as they did not become my puppet. I reloaded the autosave, which was during the war, and won the war again. This time there was no longer an option to make Venezuela a puppet.

I'm guessing that loading the save while trying to do this breaks it, due to democracies not being able to puppet or something.

Any suggestions? Anyone seen anything like this before?