Fantastic, the clearest summary I've seen in a long time.
I especially like how you've combined so many important things into a single word: 'cycling'. I think you're using this term to mean 'ways to play your payload cards more often', roughly correlating with 'number of passes through your deck per turn' (assuming you're playing your payload cards once per pass).
But one comment I would make is that your definition and description of cycling cards makes it sound as though draw (maybe with enough actions) is the only factor contributing to cycling.
For example your only examples of non-payload cards are here:
Cards like Smithy, Caravan, and Village are not winning cards. They are cards that let you draw your winning cards, but they don't win games by themselves.
and cycling/payload cards here:
Some cards (Poacher, Market, Grand Market) straddle the line between both categories.
And your definition of cycling cards is:
Cards that help you draw your payload are cycling cards.
Now you and I know that one card that helps me draw my payload is Chapel. And another is Cartographer. But the definition doesn't make a newer player think of them; the ways in which they help are very important, but indirect.
Can you expand your description of cycling to make it clearer that trashing and sifting help you draw payload too?
You do mention it in passing later in the article:
how do you shuffle your deck more often? You do so by buying cycling cards! This is part of why I upgraded my opinion on Lookout. Not only is trashing cards good, getting to discard bad cards makes you reshuffle more often in the early game, giving you a slight edge.
but I think we should have had a clearer definition/description of cycling before this, to include trashing and discarding bad cards.
