Firstly most people have switched because now running 4 x BS, 4 x PN, 4 x GP and 4 x Pre you are more likely to have double cantrips rather than suitable mana out. The life loss scenario you mention is relevant but by the time that sort of life loss occurs you probably have more mana available than the very minimum. Some people have tried both however having two 'dead' ish cards in the deck can be troublesome for sure.
Personally I have been working on a two colour no-wish variant that eschews AoI for 1 x IU and 1 x IC main. The deck is much more designed to produce a lot of B mana and therefore wants the cheaper IU and the B IC for pile enabling. It also allows for double cantrip piles such as [LED, IU, LP, DR, ToA] though does require greater storm count pre-pile. It runs at least
Conjurer's Bauble as additional cantrips that can also be used as the same stored draw as SDT was giving the 1UU pile of [IU, LED, CB, GP, LM] and allow other tricks such as storm looping (1:1 Mana:Storm benefit with no cards in deck) or to increase pile size.
If you decide to remain on the Wish version I would say stick to AoI as it does some solid work atm, especially in the face of Leovold and you can run two as you can replace the traditionally SB IC with a second AoI. You can also Double Doomsday off of it as the draw spell into the second pile can be stored in exile using it. With the UB version CB allows for the Double Doomsday-ing to occur.
First of all I will point out I consider 17 lands high so 18 is just crazy talk to me. I run 16 lands and 2 LP though one land is more of a Spell (
Lake of the Dead). For Wish variants I think 15-16 lands and 3-4 LP is a good place to be. I agree you want a
Badlands though should remove a Volc for it. I also think you could drop a Mire and up a Tarn unless you have a lot of likelihood of the new Spyglass being around in Stompy lists.
Pulverise I am less sure on.
By Force has been used a lot to great success but obviously if Pulverise has been doing the work then stick with it.
Hopefully that helps at least somewhat!