That's not how epicycles were used. Ptolemy set up the standard geocentric model with epicycles (and deferents and equants), and these were used more or less un

That's not how epicycles were used. Ptolemy set up the standard geocentric model with epicycles (and deferents and equants), and these were used more or less unchanged for over a thousand years. When, in the late medieval period, some Arab astronomers began tinkering with modifications, these were motivated by a desire for better agreement with the Aristotelian ideal of uniform circular motion (i.e., to somehow replace Ptolemy's non-uniform equant device with some combination of uniform circular motion), not any desire to match the measurements better.