The amount of towns at the bottom bar does not take into account razed towns. Meaning if you capture a town and raze it, it will still count in the bottom bar.
I can 100% confirm that what Itangast reports is a bug.
That's because in one of my games, an opponent was just eliminated due to missing 3 turns in a row. All his cities turned back to neutral.
What I found *very* interesting is that a city he had razed several turns ago, was suddenly rebuilt and sitting empty. So the game clearly is identifying razed cities as belonging to a player.
1 incorret counted cities at status bar 2 possibly income from razed cities also, at least showed like this in status bar 3 player kicked out due to inactivity gets razed cities owned by him rebuilt!