Looking quickly at the debug.err file, there were 5 factions playing in the game, including myself. 

At the end of turn 1, there were 8 cities, so I'm assuming there were 3 neutral factions.  At turn 180, when my game crashed, there were 34 cities.  I had just built my third when the game crashed, so that leaves (assuming additional neutral cities were NOT formed since turn 1) 28 cities, or averaging 7 cities per AI.  This seems quite to me, but it may just be my play style.  Are we supposed to be forming a new city every ~25 turns?