I'm a huge fan of the computer game HoMaM4 and I watch videos on YouTube by other players, walking through the campaigns. The goal for me is to have fun, learn new strategies, gain new moves practices, etc. While the gamer is fighting the battles, he's commenting on some of his tactics/moves and explains why he does these moves and what's their benefit. One of the comments was:
This battle can be fairly easily won, but we use more cheesy tactics to avoid any losses.
The gamer was using a tactic that includes only one creature in the battle (and letting the other creatures stay in the back) because this creature has a special ability which prevents the attacked opponent from returning the attack. Using this tactic, the battle took longer, but the result was that other creatures were not hurt and it was a flawless victory – no losses or damage taken from the opponent. The other way of winning this battle and make it shorter (duration) would be to use all creatures to attack the opponent, but there would be losses, although small.
I do understand approximate meaning of this expression, but I'm wondering about three things:
- What is the exact meaning of this expression?
- Where does this expression come from?
- Is this expression used only in war/battle/games language (Google associated this expression with games) or can it be used also in different situation?