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I have started to build a few items to boost my pretender (like ring of sorcery, crystal coin, earth boots...) such that he is now F3 A2 W3 E3 S6 D3 N5.
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You are working on a ring of wizardry, and you probably don't have a skull cap yet, but sooner or later you should summon a Mound Fiend (D3) - he can then be given the job of summoning spectres to give you more varied magic (D?2, where ? is WESD). S will allow you to sitesearch all astral via spell, W to map all water (on land) with the bracelet.
Early in the game (which you are not), it would have been better to use the cheaper Revenant (and give him a Skull Staff so he can multiply
) to cast dark knowledge.
You say you have one mage sitesearching fire. If you have lots of provinces left that need to be searched, your pretender might want to forge a flaming skull (FD req) that you can give to boost another fire mage to cast augury.
Your paths allow you to contact Naiad (well, one more water, but that is easily forgeable) if you have a surplus of water gems, giving you a unit that can hammer out clams, sitesearch water/nature, or contact other Naiads.
How I usually search for sites (in long games):
* If I have a rainbow pretender, I use him to search for sites the first 10-20 turns after he is activated (awake or dormant, never imprisoned for this), then he is usually retired to forging/rituals.
* If I have any decent national mages with multiple paths or high single paths, I have them out searching manually. Priests too once I have a surplus of them - you'd be amazed how many Ancient Temples with 1 astral gem income slips under the radar if you just use mages.
* Sitesearching spells of all types have high priority in research. Especially if I have mages with D1 or S1, getting that death and astral gem income going early is important. A good starting astral income will help you when sitesearching other paths where you have a low income as you can convert the astrals as needed - it does pay off. The earlier you get things sitesearched, the better.
* Construction 4 to create cheap and useful pathboosters, and to start forging skull mentors with the death gems found, has a fairly high priority as well.
* Use death and nature magic via conjuration to branch into areas of magic your nation doesn't touch at all. If your nation doesn't have good death or nature mages, your pretender should probably have these paths unless you are going for a blessing strategy or a dedicated SC. Sure, you might find good independent mages - but then again, you might not, and having a guaranteed way to get mages in the mid-game to bootstrap yourself into a power in all (or most) of the magic types is important.
Ulm is probably the least magical nation around, but even so, assuming you plan for [get some death/astral income going early on] it you should be able to master at least FWESDN in longer games. (A is harder and B is not going to happen except in Black Forest) Then again, you might get uncommonly unlucky in sites, but, on average, you won't be.