[PvK]

I like MA Ulm a lot, but I mainly play for fun rather than competetiveness. However some competetive pretender choices seem to me would be:

A rainbow mage. Gives you all the paths you lack at least on the pretender, helps research and accelerates site searching.

A Ghost King can be a rainbow and a strong combattant.

A Lich or Phoenix or Vamp Queen shouldn't take as many paths, but can be defensively annoying to your foes with its immortality. Choose magic that can eventually be very nasty on the battlefield in a disposable way.

A Virtue can be a good mobile supercombattant but don't waste points on more than two (at most) paths. Plan to fully equip her with items, of course.

A strong combattant pretender (Wyrm, Manticore, or whatever you prefer) can also be good to deal with types of foes that your troops won't.

It helps to think of what the heavy infantry can't fight well at all: Giants, poison, mind burn, lightning... and develop something to throw against those threats.

Also I tend to prefer Productivity scale to Order as Ulm, because I usually have plenty of gold anyway, since the troops mainly cost resources rather than gold.

PvK