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One of my players has GM-ed Kingmaker, so he knows the overall campaign well, but he ran it by-the-book. I try to vary things up to keep it interesting for him, including incorporating lots of the excellent ideas from this forum.
Here's something I came up with as a variant of the Missing Townsfolk event in Rivers Run Red. I haven't actually run this yet, because Hargulka's Monster Kingdom is very much the focus of play at the moment.
One of the carpenter's other apprentices has developed a feud with the doppleganger apprentice, and is becoming annoying (and he's also poking around and getting close to the truth), so the doppleganger decides to kill him. A Kellid barbarian who's recently arrived and staying in the inn, Kundal, makes a suitable fall-guy. On a night that is coincidentally a full moon, the doppleganger will use its shape-shifting abilities to steal Kundal's axe from his room and hide it in an alleyway, then use another form to lure the rival apprentice there, take Kundal's form and kill him with the axe. It will make sure that it's spotted either during the attack or after, abandon the axe, run off towards the inn and then shift and lose itself in the crowd.
The PCs will then have to try to sort out the mess. If they confront Kundal in the inn with the blood-stained axe, the barbarian will be confused at first and then outraged that they have his axe, and won't listen to anyone until they hand it back. Things could degenerate quickly.
In mine mythic Kingmaker campaign I'm thinking of having mine players encounter 2 different Irovetti, the first is the standard human one (they already met him at the beginning of RRR), while the 2nd one will be a Vilderavn.
The later will kill and replace the first one during BFB, but the real Castruccio will be able to keep secret the location of Briar, making the Vilderavn mission to recover it a partial failure.
By the way, Castruccio's CR is also the same of the Vilderavn (16)
In my previous game, I took a number of the basic quests from RRR and tied them to a tiny village a few miles from the Staglord's fort. So The Turtle and Tig quests came from there. It gave me a nice 'cowed' Hamlet, as well as the Kobolds and the Lizard folk for the PCs to interact with socially.
I never did quite understand how the bandits from The Stolen Land survived without anyone to intimidate and rob locally. This time around, I have added a couple more small villages in the Kamelands - as well as a river pirate base in the slough, for the party to interact with.
neutralising that pirate base will be one of the triggers for the boggard expansion in the slough.
My campaign is now at the end of RRR and I have yet to introduce Irovetti, but I'm already anticipating a similar scenario as you describe here as my party, although excellent at at acting IC but are experienced gamers and have what they refer to as their 'RPG senses' which are somewhat harder to ignore. What I've done to this point is let them believe what they want to believe, even give hints that could point them further in that direction before throwing a serious curve ball.
In your case I would consider selling Pitax as the menacing and corrupt nation that it is. A few verbal scraps at meetings or in letters, rumors from other nations that Pitax wishes to expand, troops partroling a bit too close to your borders, casual requests of information which could have tactical benefit if an assault did take place, that sort of thing. Seen as your party is smart don't over sell it, just keep the notion in their head. In parallel with this I'd introduce Mivon (or another big party) as a very neighbourly country, bailing them out of a BP shortage (with a catch of course, it can't be to good to be true) or generally acting courteously.
When the time comes that as written the war with Pitax would start have tensions rise and rumors spread of hostility's between Pitax and Mivon. When their year long allie comes to the party to request aid against their common enemy they are likely to accept. It shouldn't be to hard to convince them if the preparation is done far in advance.
Now we get back to the as written part. Once the party's armies are marching on Pitax, Mivon can sweep in from the south in a similar fashion as Pitax does in the adventure. Shift some encouter areas and hardly anything need to be changed. Pitax might even prove an ally after all with some shrewd negotiating. Nothing plays with emotions better than feeling betrayed. >:)
This is all sort of rough and needs some work, but it's as far as I got in my coffee break.
One interesting twist might be to have Irovetti be the bad guy, but not really in the way you might think. His ticktock technology was stolen from Numeria and seemed to get away with it. Yet perhaps they won another way. Although the Numerians could not kill him, perhaps they could subvert. One of Irovetti's stolen toys could have contained numerous nanites that could be triggered to infiltrate the body and mind of the thief and subvert him to command of Numeria's Black Sovereign (or some similar character.) Slowly, Irovetti's brain was altered to subtly serve the Sovereign's will (It may have also boosted his aptitude like the worms from Futurama boosted Fry's; this would explain Irovetti's sudden rise in levels.)
Of course, Numeria's goal may be to set up a proxy state from which to raid/exploit/dominate the river kingdoms. If the Numerians frequently monitor/monitored him, they may have discovered Nyrissa. If so, then perhaps Irovetti has turned on his former lover and the PCs are manipulated by Nyrissa into taking down an (admittedly highly cruel) wall in her way.