I earned all the stars in the industrial age, chose the Swedes as my new culture, then the game said someone had reached the final era and thus the game would end on the next turn, which is exactly what happened. After some googling I found out that one of the win conditions was a faction earning all of the stars in the final era, but that's not what happened at all. None of the computer players got any stars in the contemporary era and neither did I.

Note: I'm not sure on the game version, but I bought the game like a week or two ago, so it should be the most recent one, probably.