I just finished my first game of Humankind and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I do have a question regarding end of game triggers. I read online that on normal "default", the following are end of game triggers:

• Reaching the last turn (300 turns on Normal Game Speed)
• Earning every Contemporary Era Star (a total of 21 stars)
• Completing the Technology tree
• Eliminating all the other Empires
• Vassalizing all the surviving Empires
• Sending a Mission to Mars through completing the Mars Colony National Project
• Rending the world unfit for human life, through pollution...

In my playthrough I had just chosen my contemporary era culture and after the turn ended, the game ended. In my game, I had not met any of the above end of game conditions.

• I was on turn 282.
• I just entered the contemporary era and obtained 1 star.
• I was still completing a technology from the industrial era.
• There was still 1 empire and they were not vassalized.
• Pollution was at 1,500 and I was far from the space program.

What happened? I am just curious... thank you for any possible explanations.

Note: When I first started Humankind I was given 3 choices. Whether to play the game as a beginner, advanced, etc. For my first playthrough I chose the left-most beginner button to hopefully get the most out of the tutorial. Would this have an impact on the end trigger? Also I noticed on my playthrough that spies and envoys were disabled despite owning the "Together We Rule" DLC, was this also because I chose the "beginner" button?

Probably one of the other Empires did it before you had the chance to. Whenever an empire meets this "aims" the game will end, and this empire does not necessarily have to be the player's one.

PS: I suppose that DLCs aren't active during the tutorial to grant a "vanilla" feeling to the player before expanding too much their prospective and causing him confusion. I guess the main aim should be: first you learn how the base game works, then, if you want, you can also know the things left (otherwise you can still give a look at the Encyclopedia)