Throw a whole bunch of non-standard enemies of the same CR range at them who use fairly rare tactics.
Basically you want to keep them off guard, not just straight-up buff the challenge.
Maybe introduce guns every now and then but don't let the PCs have access to them if they normally wouldn't (one level of Gunslinger and all the guns being broken could do that).
JuJu Zombies wielding muskets or something.
When GMing in 3.5 (my group tends to make fairly optimized and balanced parties and I have not GMed in Pathfinder yet but I assume the same principles apply) I would throw in terrain and other circumstances that would benefit my monsters and hinder the players...darkness, traps, walls, difficult terrain, doorways, etc. that would help balance out the encounter. Also try to stay away from single Big Bads since they can be quickly overpowered by a balanced and optimized party.
For Adventure Paths you might be kinda stuck. Maybe change the xp gain from med to slow to help balance things but I am not very sure.
First, the charts in the CRB can be useful, but if you've a character with a powerful race, you might want to consider them CR+1, or if everyone's from a powerful race, then raise the whole party's APL by 1 or 2.
Archetypes on their own, with a few possible exceptions like synthesist summoner, should not boost power level. In fact many archetypes make a class overall weaker than core, just specialized well in a particular area. If you're feeling archetypes are breaking things, it may be more that you have players very good at combat optimization and tactics, which can be done with or without fancy races and archetypes--those things make it easier, but the real issue is the players' skill and play style. You may need to think about and adjust your tactics.
Other ways to boost challenges:
- Weather and other hazards. The hard part with weather is most weather effects screw over ranged combatants exclusively over melee combatants so you don't want to use them all the time to make the ranged PC feel like he can't do his thing, but a lot of times weather, terrain, and other difficulties will make a fight more challenging without having to tweak monsters at all. Weather and terrain effects reduce movement, visibility, force concentration checks, etc. High level characters who can fly can avoid some terrain effects but they can't avoid weather, and if they have to maneuver between trees or rocks or whatever that can make it hard for them too. A simple thing like fog is nasty because no one with normal vision can see past 5 feet.
- Use simple monster templates to boost existing planned encounters' CR. Best are ones that boost attack, damage, and saves. Don't worry about AC as much--it's okay if the PCs drop the monster quickly, but the monster needs to have given them a good scare before they drop, so it feels like they overcame a good challenge. Alternately just give them, say, a +2 boost to one or a few features, or a special ability like fast healing.
- A more complex method is to add a class level or two to a monster, if appropriate. This takes more time, however.
- Add mooks. A fight of many is usually more challenging than a fight against one or two massively powerful monsters -- as long as the many can HIT the party, which is the challenge of building the "many" kind of fights. I find a good battle is 1-2 stronger monsters that are the meat of the challenge for the PCs, but then 3-6 weaker monsters that may only hinder the PCs more than truly challenge them, but they can distract the PCs from the big bad(s), make it easier for enemies to flank (PCs with good tactics often work well to get their bonus to flank, which means they're often getting a +2 to attack the monsters are not, unless you're also working on getting them to flank), and generally cause blockades between the PCs and the big bads while the big bads do their thing. Even if you just add massively low level creatures, sometimes them simply acting as speedbumps and distractions can do well to make a fight more challenging.
In my experience DON'T massively raise AC (a monster hard to hit just takes longer to kill, although they shouldn't be wet tissue paper), increase or add DR if they don't already have it (DR just consumes more time), raise HP (unless you're buffing a very weak monster to be a much stronger one), or generally do anything that makes combat longer without making the combat feeling satisfyingly more challenging.
Also, don't worry about some fights being easy. I am a firm believer in the players getting through an easy fight and feeling good about themselves -- it makes that one BIG challenge you build feel that much more challenging (and hopefully thus exciting).
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Varying difficulty of fights is a good thing - it's nice for players to feel powerful in a relatively easy fight, and then challenged in a hard fight. Players really get a kick out of doing better against an enemy than last time, for example if this time they used a good plan or had figured out how to handle that kind of enemy (kill the disease-ridden undead melee monstrosities with concentrated fire at range, before they could charge close enough; the players really enjoyed that, especially because those critters really gave them a run for their money the first time around).
Player skill is also a factor. If as a GM you repeatedly use the same monsters, players will adapt to use the best tactics against them. For example, the campaign I play in we fought a lot of orcs, so my wizard learnt quite a few spells to attack them mentally or blind them, because going through their HP/Fort isn't great.
So then we faced undead earth elementals with tremorsense - suddenly my invisibility and glitterdust didn't really help that much. And by the time I figured out what to do (they go away after drinking some life energy, so I just summon some lemures to feed them), we met lightning elementals, which means I can't just fly away from it all.
The moral: change up the kind of monsters you're using regularly, and surprise players with them; it's hard to be prepared for everything.
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This great advice and just what I need everyone. I am using an AP so yea its tough to add stuff and I don't want to increase the exp and make them really op.
Deathquaker thank you! Very good info about not raising, ac, hp , dr. It was something I was thinking about doing but now I see it just drags out the fight and gives no real boost to the parties sense of accomplishment. It sounds like I could have made for a boring game by doing that.
Thanks everyone