The term cheesy is used to describe tactics, strategy or, most generally, behaviour in a computer game that is somehow both underhand, and not what one might expect to see. So, for example, I've read that Panzer General II suffers because the optimal strategy is to build one's army up to include nothing but tanks and reconnaissance units. Games that purport to be historical simulations or recreations are most vulnerable to this problem, because people already have a firm idea of what is appropriate for the period being recreated. Thus, in this preview for the Empire Earth game, cheese is confidently predicted.
This prediction for Empire Earth is based on the fact that it is going to feature a large number of units, making the game designers' task very difficult. If they are not careful, they will have to assess a number of interactions that is quadratic in the number of unit types. Games of this type are very complicated, and it's interesting that players manage to figure out the unexpected, but optimal, strategies quite quickly. My theory is that the search-space is a nice, continuous surface, so natural selection (particularly in very competitive, online human vs. human settings) can quickly home in on good strategies. Secondly, cheesy strategies are easy to postulate; they usually involve behaviours that are in some sense extreme. It's very easy to first suppose that an army consisting entirely of tanks will do well, and to then test this idea. It's much harder to come up with a complicated balancing act strategy, and to then implement this.
If people get concerned enough about this, and are playing against other people, they can still use the underlying computer game's basic implementation. They just need to agree to abide by additional rules, forbidding dodgy tricks. An example of such a set of rules are these, rules for governing player behaviour when playing John Tiller's Napoleonic Battleground games.
If the game setting is not historical, can cheese still exist? Do
people have expectations (that can be disappointed) if they are
playing a game with a fantasy or science-fiction setting? In many
situations, they can, and their reaction will typically be to complain
that what they're seeing is not realistic. Excessively
literal-minded people then tend to say, ``Hey, what's realistic about
magical spells, anyway?'' Skotos.net has a nice
introductory discussion of realism, a ``dirty word in gaming'', here,
discussing this objection and others.
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