I check an average of 150 systems a day - its effectively all I do
I check around 50 (eta around 40 now following several successful retreats), I don't use external tools though, I visit them in the game if the galaxy map figures look unexpected (eg didn't change from the previous day).
Perhaps it's a localised issue only affecting the systems I checked in-game, that gave the appearance of normal, expected behaviour when in the rest of the systems there was an extra tick?
There have been rare occasions where more than one tick occurred, I didn't see any evidence of that yesterday though. Can you give an example system where a war progressed more quickly than usual? I can give an example of one that proceeded as normal - Helios.
eta2 there were several systems where the galaxy map data did not completely update with yesterday's tick (but local news did), LFT 859 for example. It was this system finally changing on the galaxy map to match local news that prompted me to post last night that things were back to normal.