I've been doing some maths lately, and I think heists are one of, if not the most efficient Epa carousel in the game.

If you use gang of hoodlums and the decoy, you can get 27 cp of casing in 8 actions, as well as a little prize, on average worth about 60p. then starting the heist and getting the inside information brings your total actions to 12. A perfect run would then take 16 actions, using both pieces of inside information on +2 cards, raising suspicion by 1 cp, and gaining 30.625E on average. Nicholas and Sons removes 5.5 cp of suspicion (on average) so you would only have to use it every 5 heists, making a perfect run take 16.2 actions. Addtionally, you can convert touching love stories to Bazaar permits, with a success of 200 cryptic clues (4E) or a rare success of a Fourth City Airag (62.5E). If you run the heist (perfectly) 100 times, you get enough love stories to convert to permits 24 times. The total prize after 100 heists, taking into account the cost of the ablution solution, is 3195.77E for 1644 actions at 1.94Epa.
Of course, you won't always get a perfect heist, you might not draw the prize card, or you might be unlucky with other cards (higher tier lodgings help). I've been doing this with 3 card lodgings, and have got a lot of perfect runs, but also quite a few that take 18 or 19 actions. Let's say that we average out to 18 actions per heist(quite conservative I would say). This then gets us an average of 1.73 Epa: still very decent, and greater than the affair of the box, similar to the fidgeting writer.
Of course, whilst on a heist, there is the possibility to snaffle documents: a highly profitable action if succesful, pretty costly if unsuccesful. It is currently at 57.35% on the spreadsheet, so that is 3.15 E each time you do it, if your luck is average. There are 18 cards (correct me if I'm wrong here) so assuming that you draw 7 cards each heist, its possibility of appearing is 38.9%. Failing here will require you to use another action to complete the heist, and will also require you to use your ablution solution sooner but maybe not seeing as it averages at 5.5 and we're using it every 5 heists. We'll assume it doesn't affect that.
Thus, assuming you snaffle every time the card comes up, and assuming you never fail the heist (that would be bad) and keeping our average time to complete a heist at 18 actions, using an ablution solution every 5 heists, our epa comes to 1.78. If you could run the heist perfectly each time (maybe possible with 5 card lodgings) your epa would be 1.998.
I don't really think any other carousel comes close to this one. The main weakness of this carousel however is the fact that you have to rely on opportunity cards, so it's not ideal to do it in the morning like you would with many others.

It's pretty easy to run perfect Heists if you are an Exceptional Friend; you can spend 15 actions to gain, 10 or 11 Casing (I forget the exact amount), spend all the Casing over 5 on an Escape Route, 1 or 2 Keys, and 4 or 5 bits of Inside Information. That way, you never have to do the Dog or Spider cards ever. (Of course, it does help to have a 4 or 5 card Lodging, which I do). I've been doing a lot of Heists lately. The rewards are nice, but the boosts to Making Waves are even better.

And resets your opportunity cards back to 10 if you exit the heist with 4 or 5 cards left on the deck.

In order: Affair of the Box, a high-level shadowy carousel (that FYI has both criminal and lawful sides); Pence Per Action; Heists are separate from Big Scores and unlocked with A Name Whispered in Darkness 5; and repeatedly side-converting tier 3 items (such as Memories of Distant Shores, Zee-ztories, Memories of Light) all the way around for the bonus MW.

Gonen wrote:

And resets your opportunity cards back to 10 if you exit the heist with 4 or 5 cards left on the deck.

That part does require Exceptional Friendship though. Mundanely friendly players would often have more difficulty due to lower card storage and as such a smaller benefit from the deck resetting. (Though I'm pretty sure the reset to 10 only happens when at five cards; from what I can tell switching to areas with their own deck doubles the number of cards stored.)

Here's my theory: anything over 3 cards would have filled it to 6 which is "max" normally - I can affirm that 2 goes to 4 and my 3 goes 6. But perhaps the code reads "max" instead of a number so the rest of you exceptional people get 10.

Gonen wrote:

Parelle wrote:

Here's my theory: anything over 3 cards would have filled it to 6 which is &quotmax&quot normally - I can affirm that 2 goes to 4 and my 3 goes 6. But perhaps the code reads &quotmax&quot instead of a number so the rest of you exceptional people get 10.

Very nice theory.
As I recall, and wrote above, that does not happens when ENTERING a Heist. Anyone to confirm this? (still at zee...)

Huh. I left a heist with 2 cards and filled back up to 6 in London. But! I then prepared and started a heist at 2 cards in deck and then had 4 in this new one (keep in mind I had a full candle of 20 actions at the start here)

I'll try to leave this heist with only 1 card left on my deck.