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I ran a good, long Kingmaker campaign, all the way to the end. By the time we finished, players were super heroes and I had to modify a lot to keep them challenged. 5 players, 20 point buy. IMHO, if you can get away with it, go for 15 point buy and really play up the gritty exploration aspects. Lower stats will also make the environment a viable threat a little longer, which - for us - was fun. Give everyone a free background Knowledge/Profession/Craft skill and toss out a few more free skill points here and there as rewards for good RPing to make up for low/average Ints most players will have. but if you go with low point buy, watch out for dumping as some may try to jack up the skills they can by dumping the others. A few 8-9's are fun because they create varied characters, but a bunch of 5-6's are lame.
I played this AP with 4 players and a 15-point buy. It was sometimes a little tough at times in the first book or two but it worked great overall, especially since this AP is set up to have a lot of one-encounter days for which the PCs can use most/all of their ressources. That de facto makes them more powerful than in a regular game when they'd likely have to manage their spells and abilities more cautiously.
Low int as a result of 15 point buy shouldnt be rewarded with other stuff. It's their fault for dumping stats if it so happens.
The paths are built with a 15 point buy in.
The experience and skill of your players also affects their effectiveness.
Players with a high level of skill and rules mastery will have an easier time than players lacking the same level.
If you group is less experienced, a 20 point buy with limits of no stat below 8 and above 18 before racial modifiers will make them more robust and less "squishy".
More experienced players can us a 15 with the same limitations.
The limitations I suggest are to keep players from having a glass jaw, an exploitable weakness that will badly hurt them at some point.
The ceiling will prevent you from having to overly modify the game for extremely powerful characters.
Keep in mind, the PCs are supposed to win against the encounters.
The will breeze past some, get beaten up against others, and fight tooth and nail against a small few.
Rolling can be cool, but it is much more challenging to balance an encounter if you have several characters with overly diverse stats. One superstar and one below average smuck can throw balance right out the window.
My thoughts.
Usually, I play Pathfinder APs with a 20-point buy.
But on Kingmaker, my DM told us to use a 25-point buy and it was a good idea. It allows the party to have decent charisma which is kind of important if you want to go in a game where you try to negotiate first.
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Low int as a result of 15 point buy shouldnt be rewarded with other stuff. It's their fault for dumping stats if it so happens.
Generally speaking, I agree, but getting some use out of normally low-priority skills like Craft/Profession/Knowledge (nobility), etc., is one of the fun things about low levels of Kingmaker. Unless players put a few ranks into those, there's a whole facet that disappears from the game.
I'm still adamant about 15 point buy. Right now I'm seeing it in 2 ways with 2 other campaigns. I'm playing in curse of the crimson throne with 25 point buy. It makes me ridiculously strong, but I built a non optimized eldritch knight and because of the high stats he's good all around. On the other hand I have a paladin 15 point buy that's also not too optimized for another AP. He's having troubles hitting sometimes and whatnot, but everything feels more like a challenge and it's fun.