Quote Originally Posted by Bramborough View Post
I would suppose that's a major reason why Military Allies and Client States count toward the victory condition....the regions are "yours", but you can still trade with them.

That said, in the campaign to which I referred above, I used MAs and CSs pretty extensively, over 25% of "my" settlements were in blue territory. And still I reached a point where there just weren't enough factions left to realistically make 20 agreements.

It doesn't help that Client States often stubbornly refuse to trade with their Big Brother faction, even decades after the initial subjugation and all the old-school hate is gone from the diplomatic modifiers.
Client States are just not thought out well. A few turns ago, my client state I subjugated close to 100 turns ago just decided to cancel our trade agreement for no good reason. They got 8000 because I was trying to figure out how much is needed to get a trade agreement back. I had so much money at that point in the game that I didn't care. If that happened early enough in the game that income mattered, that would be a reload and a punitive expedition mounted.