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I had similar thoughts as you, denigruer. I had used small troll armies back in Rivers Run Red, and the trolls ended up sacking Tatzylford. When the town was rebuilt it was with an eye towards defense. There was no way the scenario outlined in the adventure was going to work so I envisioned something bigger using the mass combat rules. I wrote down my thoughts on the adventure prior to running it here, and a recounting of how it all turned out starts here.
Basically, I had Brevoy invade the players' kingdom shortly after the attack on Tatzylford and before they could properly invade Drelev (hit them when they're weak!). The PCs managed to beat back Surtova's initial foray and then immediately put Drelev on the backburner to deal with the bigger threat.
When the players later met with Irovetti, he claimed that he had hired a mercenary army to sack Drelev, not their kingdom. They must have fallen under the sway of this "Armag" character and gone rogue, he told them. And they mostly bought it.
In your situation, you have a nice opening with Mivon being an antagonist. Mivon and Pitax are at odds over this border town Sarain that's off the southern end of the map, and don't like or trust one another (hmm, I thought I read that the town changed hands between the two kingdoms somewhere but now I can't find the reference). You could have Irovetti approach the PCs now and offer an alliance against their southern neighbor. He can befriend them before the invasion, and perhaps the players will be more likely to believe him when he blames the attack on Armag.
My group is going to be doing the Battle of Tatzylford next session. I too had to make some changes since, as mentioned, the army as described in the book is quite pitiful. My players would have probably just attacked the army themselves. Lucky for me, my players decided to go out looking for loot (literally how the fighter described it) and decided to wander into Drelev's demesne. In an effort to plant the hook, I had them come across the army (from a bit afar) as they were wandering in Drelev's area. I described the army as "at least 100 barbarians plus 6 trolls". The party's initial reaction was to attack, figuring a couple of fireballs would take out the humans and then they could focus on the trolls.
Luckily they decided to wait til morning (given in part that they were not technically in their own region and the army was thus, not actually obviously hostile yet). In the morning they started to head toward the army to talk to them (cooler heads starting to prevail) when they were stopped by a rear guard patrol of four visible barbarians. (4 more hiding in trees). PCs attacked (for some reason) and while they made fairly short work of the barbarians, they did learn that they were not total pushovers (I used the Tiger Lord NPC stats). This ultimately lead to me lifting the hood on the mass combat mechanics for this adventure (i.e. the condensed version). Essentially they realized that it would be difficult for the PCs to take on the army by themselves (assuming all the barbarians had 50ish HP) but were likewise concerned that the army would steamroll anything they had.
So in short, I'm compromising a bit. Telling the players that in general, PCs can't do a lot to affect an army in mass combat. Maybe not the most elegant solution, but one that works for now. The actual battle will be run fairly similarly as to how its printed, just that everything is bigger (bigger invading army, bigger town, bigger defending army, etc.). The players are discussing what measures to take and I'm leaving some of the options open for discussion as for instance, one player has already asked about using Wall of Stone to help build up the wall quickly. Essentially giving them back some agency in terms of tactics, etc. I'll update after we run the battle (on the 25th hopefully).
Ran the battle this weekend with the expanded numbers as indicated above.
Worked out pretty well. The different players had different ideas as to how they wanted to try to help prepare the town which was actually pretty good. The cleric summoned laborers to make traps, the mages cast walls of stone to help expedite the barricades. The fighter helped with the barricades figuring he could carry heavy stuff and give a few pointers to the defenders. The rogue scouted the woods and the helped select sniper positions in the trees. The Stryx monk flew aerial reconnaissance to look for the approaching army, etc.
In the end because of the early warning and some creative choices on the part of the party, I allowed them to make 5 preparations (barricades, snipers in trees, archers on bridge, traps, recruit wildlife), and the defenders ended up with slightly better stats than the attackers (1 higher in both OM and DV). First three rounds saw the defenders ahead 3-1 on VP and the party handled the trolls fairly well (with the exception of the wizard who took a full attack to the face and needed the cleric to use Breath of Life on her).
All in all it seemed to work well enough for the situation. The group felt as though they were able to contribute and given their positioning on the battlefield I was able to describe what different PCs were doing during the different stages of the battle and had the different PCs make different rolls, etc. Long-term, I'm not so sure how interesting the mass combat rules will be, but we will cross that bridge when the time comes.