Starting tomorrow, we will be reducing the number of required victory towns by 1 per day for War#11 to reduce the amount of time it will take for the Conquest to reach a conclusion. The required # of victory towns will not drop below three more than that claimed by the faction with more victory towns at the moment.
We've been holding onto the 0.16 update for over a week now and the conclusion of the Conquest will allow us to finally release it. In the future, we will be introducing features that will steer conquests towards a natural end as it progresses into the endgame so that this sort of developer intervention isn't necessary.
Thanks for your patience.