I think there is some confusion here about strategy.
Let's start with the classic game of tic-tac-toe. When you're a young child, it seems like a rather complex game. However, as you get older you realise that the game is broken. There is only one way to play the game. If the first player knows this technique, he can never lose. If both players know the technique, then neither can ever win. The game just repeats in the same cycle with the exact same game being played over and over again and ending in a draw. At that point, it's no longer a game. Learning to walk is a fun challenge until you've mastered it.
You can then advance to more advanced tiers of games such as checkers, and later chess. Again, there are very specific ways to play these games, although in the case of chess, even human grandmasters have not fully mastered it and so they have been dominated by the raw processing power of computers.
At the highest tier of strategy are games such as Go. This game is exceptionally complex, and even grandmasters of this game play by using
intuition as much as actual strategy. Often, these grandmasters can't fully explain their strategy. There are certain configurations of the pieces that simply look "beautiful". Computers finally defeated the grandmasters of this game after programmers designed a new technology based on "neural networks" that imitate this human intuition.
Video games such as D:OS2 ideally want to reach the same level of strategic complexity as Go. Even if we're not an advanced player, the goal of a strategy game is to train our ability to analyse a situation and train our skill and intuition in order to select the best strategy.
The problem with "cheesy techniques" is that they expose parts of the strategy game, or the strategy AI that are broken. Suddenly, when you begin stacking barrels next to an opponent to keep them trapped, you find yourself locked in the mindless repetition of a game of tic-tac-toe. There is nothing left to learn.
The only winning move is not to play.
