The Endgame

The Fall of the Autarch departs from most RPGs in that it has a campaign end condition. There are a few games that have such a thing, like Burning Empires, which FotA draws some inspiration from. In that game there is a single value, Disposition, for both the heroes and the Vaylen (the big bad of Burning Empires), which underlies how strong the forces are. Various "maneuvers" are played against the GM, who controls the Vaylen faction. These will affect the Disposition of one side or the other. When a side has their Disposition drop down to 0, they effectively get what they want out of the conflict.

Most other kingdom building games don't have such an end condition. Instead, it follows a more traditional RPG path, where each side simply continues playing, until some narrative ending is reached. The bad guy is slain, people stop showing up, etc.

For FotA, I'm leaning towards following the Burning Empires model. Instead of Disposition, though, the faction Stability value will probably be the important piece. The mission types will usually either affect the Autarch's Stability or the Stronghold's Stability (occasionally both). When one of these values drops down to 0, the campaign is over, and that side has collapsed.

My main worry about using a single value is that the game may have a period where it's pretty obvious that one side or the other has won, but it takes forever to play out. This happens quite a bit in boardgames, and isn't usually very fun. In boardgames, a player can frequently concede, which is certainly possible in the RPG as well, although that isn't quite as fun. Maybe there can be some "high risk/high reward" type missions that will allow a side to get back in it, or become completely broken. That is, spend Stability as a last hurrah, which is certainly a more climactic way to end the campaign than getting nickle and dimed to death. 

Something I'll have to think about.