While many truths are spoken of in this thread, I feel like this is a bit too heavy to apply to a video game. As to the whole "Does cheesing count as strategy?"....Well, yeah, it does. You can have any opinion you want on a strategy. Most people hate Hitlers political move to make the Jews a scapegoat, but it's universally accepted as brilliant and effective. It was also considered very simple and straightforward. So......technically, Hitler "cheesed" politics in a way.
Cheesing in and of itself is generally only given bad reputation cause lots of people would consider it a hollow victory when the point of buying and playing a game such as CIV or D:OS or mortal combat is to challenge yourself so that your skills are sharpened. Generally, players than go on to face each other if the game has some PvP of a kind.
As a player and individual, I would never consider cheesing a bad move, but I would also avoid over reliance. As an opponent, I'd see it as a crutch to be knocked aside since it's indicative of lack of true skill if my opponent is a one trick pony. As a developer, I'd try to make my game as anti-cheese as possible since "cheese" strategies mean that I've somehow failed to develop a well made AI opponent or difficulty for the player....unless the game isn't meant to be taken all the seriously at an intellectual level and creating an inherently and scalable challenging game wasn't the goal: like explorer mode isnt meant to challaeneg anything
