Perhaps rather than removing victory points, you just edit it a little more.
Yo devs I have a great idea. I doubt everyone will like it but I think its a better way to do this victory point thing. So to rename a province you have to own more than 50% of a province and then you get a crown next to your name in the province ranking. Since the only thing you get from owning a province is the ability to rename it then lets go a little farther with that. When somebody becomes the king of a province then that adds one victory point to their tribe and that is the only way to get victory points. So there would be the opportunity for 1 VP per province. It makes since because if a tribe has the most amount of kings of a province then they technically are the rulers of the land...
Stemming off this idea a bit. Each province is worth 1 point. In order to capture the province, you must own 51% of the total points in the province. For example, if there is 10 villages and the total points in that province is 30k ( assume all villages are 3k), then you would need 15,300 points(6 villages) in that province to "capture" it. This way it encourages players to level their villages and not just eat every barb in the province.
If there is 1 active player in that province and the rest are inactives, then they really only need 3-4 fully developed villages.
In less active worlds, it would only require you to capture a small amount of villages in each province. In worlds with more fighting, it could mean the difference between 10 points and really emphasis invading and fighting for a province.
Obviously this needs to be revamped a little because it could also encourage turtle tribes to just noble the whole province. Perhaps making 70% of all owned provinces the goal, which is more than enough and would discourage eating a whole province just to hold 1.