Okay, I've totally got a handle on how to play your usual NPC's from literally every walk of life. I can do smart and dumb, inciteful and clueless, viscious and calculating, reckless and naive...
...but how do you play someone with mental abilities not just so far beyond your own but beyond that of any human who has ever lived? How do you represent thousands of years of experience? Presumably by giving the NPC every advantage possible when it comes to preparation and foreknowledge, but even if I could do that realistically, how does my party stand against such a foe?
I'm reading through the Wrath of the Righteous and see Demon Lords with an Intelligence of 24 and a Wisdom of 32. We're talking about creatures whom have engaged in every manner of warfare imaginable and have still managed to survive for thousands upon thousands of years. How do I play such a foe and how do My PC's prepare for him? I would expect that literally anything they can come up with would have already been encountered, anticipated, prepared for and mitigated... I want to keep it realistic, but how?
Short answer: You can't.
Long answer: You can wing it by (a) using all the means you outlined, and also (b) by making the villain totally pre-occupied with some major problem that is monopolizing his/her/its attention, to the exclusion of almost everything else -- including the PCs. A villain like that should probably have 2-3 schemes going, not just one, and one of the others might be only barely tangential to the whole story arc, but it might also be draining the villain's time, attention, and resources.
Well, I haven't read through Wrath of the Righteous, but one option is to have another, equally intelligent (or just plain destructive) creature mess up those plans. Essentially, draw his attention and resources to a different front, and that provides the party an opportunity to slip in and launch a surprise attack.
This could be an allied celestial, or maybe an opposing demon lord or maybe just some random unaligned monster from the high CR range. Have his guard's numbers reduced because they had to take out a high level Kami or something.
Note, this does not necessarily have to be a prescence that the party ever has to have interacted with, but it makes a nice detail if you have a castle that is charred and with a couple walls broken. Have come underlings cleaning up the mess and commenting on the incursion. It provides a perspective of a world that doesn't revolves around the party and two major otherworldly players.
Here's an idea to try, it's based on some roleplaying advice I read somewhere years ago but I can't remember the source anymore. It's a bit time-consuming but should help.
Without the players around build a party of four adventurers, a typical fighter/wizard/rogue/cleric of the appropriate ECL. Then rehearse the attack using the mock party you've created, rather than the PCs.
Figure out all the strategies that a typical party would use and invent a counter-strategy for the demon lord to use.
This way the demon lord will appropriate reflect that they're prepared for the typical party and won't make any classic blunders, but the PCs can potentially surprise them using their own unique characters and/or strategies.
Also remember that if the PCs are famous, any strategies that they are well-known for can be researched by intelligent adversaries who see them coming. Feel free to develop counter-strategies to any tactics the PCs are famous for.
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Short answer: The party alone (assuming they are mortal, alone, have human lifetimes and no external preexisting organization hell bent on stopping said threat) can't and said enemy has to majorly f~$$ up.
The long answer:
1. The party has to live a very long time and the game has to take place over a very long time: Basically you are taking on an immortal enemy who has an immortals time and will use it, therefore the party has to get used to that with plans simply failing because the enemy decides he's cool to wait them out a century or 12 before he picks up again. This can be interesting as you get the characters to really use those long lived races or have to play their great great descendent, continuing the work of their ancestors to burn this evil off the face of existence. This can also be a great way to watch players who get really attached to a character try to find radical ways to prolong their life and therefore survive until that time.
2. Other organizations: In the case of Wrath you basically have this one. Remember that though the PC's will be the nail that drives this coffin home they are working with organizations that have been trying to smash this monster for at least 100 years if not more with the Riftwardens having been trying to stop planar shenanigans like this for centuries, the various paladin and cleric orders of Iomede and other LG gods having been training for this stuff for millenia (and with some of the empyreal lords since the beginning of time), the green faith wanting to stop this crap since it's inception and even more now that Sarkoris is gone, and the sordid history Deskari already has had with the region for centuries since he fought and lost to The Last Azlant you have a host of people who've been preparing to take this sucker down for a while now. Now the key to making this approach work is that the players understand that at the end of the day this was a massive effort by countless individuals over millenia of time in order to put Deskari and his minions into the ground and that without them no one could have actually laid him to rest. On top of this you have his hubris as an immortal being like that and the lack of caution with mortals. To him we are but ants but these 4-6 players are the ones that will cause him the aniphylactic shock that he would have never expected.
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One thing I'd do is listen to the party as they make their plans on how to take down the Big Bad. Even the OOC stuff. And make your plans accordingly. This supra-genius level evil has already thought of your particular plan, and come up with some way to counter it as best it can. Is it cheating? Only a little. GMs get to cheat, though, so it's all good.
Well... int 24 is pretty nasty, but I'm also running an adventure path where if players decide to continue after where it ends they will have opponent with 48 int. Now that is something to wrap your head around.
Keep in mind that game time and real time are often going at different speeds, where your big bad might have only seconds to rethink his/her plan, you can have much more time than that. Using that wisely can help you cross that cap between you and your characters.
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I generally try to shy away from encouraging an adversarial role between the GM and the players, but a little of that goes a long way in playing hyper-intelligent foes. Look at your party and consider your monster: who's the biggest threat? Does the monster need to move freely, making a controller the threat? Or do they have mighty saves and SR, meaning that the Paladin and its ability to breach DR and inflict terrible smiting damage is the greater threat? Smart villains should be just as aware as you, no doubt are of the dangers of action economy.
Now, like I said, a little of this goes a long way since a monster that has a perfect counter and makes every action a slog through the mud is a challenge, to be sure, but is also a threat to fun - gauge your players carefully and give 'em hell!
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The quotes LazarX posted are dead on. To keep this from getting too frustrating for your players, you might want to establish a contingency pool. Designate a value in magic items, henchmen, preparations, etc. for them to represent insightful preparations.
For example, say you have a lich that knows the PCs are going to attack. You determine he's got a reserve of 8,000 gp in magic items, a CR 12 henchman and 9 spell levels of defenses. These reserves represent having just the right tactic prepared to counter the PCs
So as the attack sets in, one of the PCs leading the attack has DR/Adamantine; use 3,000 gp of that reserve to make its golem's main weapon adamantine because he'd predicted he'd need it. When the PC monk glides past the front lines to grapple the lich, a succubus teleports in to intercept him; the lich had arranged in advance to have her scrying to teleport in at his signal (that uses up his reserve henchman). The PC bard unexpectedly gets in close enough to use a Greater Shout; the lich had a resist energy (sonic) spell active (using two of his reserve spell levels). But once that reserve of abilities is gone, you've reached the extent to which the lich's vast intelligence was able to predict and prepare in advance and beyond what you as a GM could see yourself as reasonable precautions.
An often overlooked point when dealing with high level outsiders:
Run away
Many of these demon lords and archdevils and what have you can teleport all over the place, so why would they ever fight a group of PCs straight up?
The Lich is hanging out staring down eternity, and he certainly isn't going to risk that to make a point to some mortals.
Wear the party down with hit and run tactics. Like you said, these enemies have lived countless millenia and fought in every type of situation available. Maybe even have the Hubris kick in and let it fight them toe to toe a few rounds before going, "Hey wait a minute, I'm smarter than this," and teleporting out.
Doing things like this will force the PCs to adapt their tactics to the situation, instead of relying on their own "brute force" due to high levels/mythic tiers. I mean seriously, no Pit Fiend worthy of the name will let himself get to half his HP without retreating (unless he's in a superior position, like over half the party is dead).
The other thing to keep in mind is that Supremely Intelligent Evil creatures "cheat". Oh you hit someone and they're down to -1 hp? Well that Demon Lord is going to make sure he hits him again and takes him out of the fight, even if it's with an AOE spell so he's not ignoring the rest of the available threats. They're likely to go after the healer first, then the caster, then the melee guys. Ultimately it's all in finding out what your players do and making them play "outside of their comfort zone" in order to beat a terror like these.
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When something bad happens to the players have your demon/fey/lich or whatever claim credit.
When something good happens:
"Bah, a minor setback."
When they force the thing to retreat: "I have no more time to attend this backwards world. Pray to whatever pathetic gods you worship that I do not choose to return."
The simple reality is , unless you add another thing to hold the creatures power down, like distractions that are big and would call for the creatures attention over the PCs , or add something that helps the PCs hiding them and giving them a boost.
They are pretty much gonna lose and die.
A creature old like that did not get old like that by being stupid , it got there beating and proving its worth against opponent after opponent.
Just like others said , tip the scale into the parties favor using something, something REALLY BIG.
Allow the villain a personality flaw that will eventually lead to his/her downfall, but until then make him/her a difficult opponent. The mastermind can be brilliant, but still ""human". Perhaps the heroes have to battle the villain indirectly for a time, until he/she is forced to act rashly and all his/her misdeeds catch up with him/her.
Do you know any "geniuses"? Are they dumbshits about certain things? Maybe that helps, I dunno.
Creative Director
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One of my favorite tricks for running really high Wis/Int/Cha characters is to shamelessly metagame. Use knowledge that logic would dictate that the character simply wouldn't know, and now and then if it makes a poor decision that you immediately realize was poor, don't be afraid to immediately backtrack and say "actually... no... it's too smart/wise to do that, and instead does this..." as long as you don't wait TOO long to change your mind.