There comes a point in any explanation where you have to ask whether you are answering the question or only adding to it.
The puzzle. What you see depends on where you stand. From here, most planets drift steadily eastward across the stars, night after night. But for several weeks every so often, one of them will stop, reverse, trace a small loop, and resume its march east. We call this retrograde motion. From our perspective, the model gets more complicated.
The fix. Iterate. Add more, smaller circles to make up for the errors. But there is no harder method to leave behind than one that works, so every imperfection becomes another correction. Another circle. Each refinement looks like progress. Each is a small truth that keeps the larger one from being known.
The flip. Question your foundational assumptions. The planets orbit the Sun, not the Earth. The corrective epicycles were a red herring, distracting us from a deeper ground truth. Planets don't loop. Some just orbit the Sun faster than others. It's simpler than it seems.
The point. You can optimize in a local minimum indefinitely. The fix is rarely a better epicycle. It comes earlier. When the corrections become painful, you stop adding circles and reconsider the ground truth. The simplest explanation is almost always the right one. Ground truth should clarify, not complicate.