When do you use "prospects" vs. "prospect"?

@Andrew Van Wagner posted:

See the bold (not sure if it matters which you use):

I want to talk about a broad point about diplomacy—isn’t it important to stress that we can’t know what the prospects for a goal are until efforts are made?

I think the plural is the more natural choice. Here's a quote from the O.E.D.:

7.

b. Expectation, or reason to look forward to something; the thing anticipated, a future occasion or event; (in plural) a person's expectations of advancement in life or career.

1665   T. Manley tr. H. Grotius De Rebus Belgicis ii. 281   For the future, nothing remained, but a prospect [L. prospectum] of Tyranny and slavery.

1667   A. Marvell Let. 14 Nov. in Poems & Lett. (1971) II. 60   If any thing be particularly in your prospects..you will do well to give us timely advice.

1719   D. Defoe Life Robinson Crusoe 43   Doing my self good in a fair and plain pursuit of those Prospects and those measures of Life, which Nature and Providence concurred to present me with.

1775   S. Johnson Let. 3 July (1992) II. 237   Our gay prospects have..ended in melancholy retrospects.

1849   T. B. Macaulay Hist. Eng. I. v. 535   The prospect which lay before Monmouth was not a bright one.

1881   J. A. Froude Short Stud. (1883) IV. ii. iii. 196   He was careless about his personal prospects.

1932   Handbk. Univ. Oxford 103   An overseas application made..a few weeks before the beginning of the academic year has little or no prospect of success.

1976   K. Amis Let. 21 Nov. (2000) 819   P..turned up the other day and was very funny about his prospects for the Nobel Prize.

2005   R. Tope Cotswold Killing xvi. 236   The world turned grey, there was no prospect of a better future, nobody cared about her.

@David, Moderator posted:

I think the plural is the more natural choice.

So do I, similarly to what happens with "expectations" (which appears in the definition above) and "chances."