many people here don't play to 'win' but just to play EB or to be utterly historical. You're compleately right that cheating is futile stupid ... if you play to win(exept if you let the AI cheat- give them money, move thier FMs to more usefull places than deserted islands .... that's OK^^). Whereas I think that most of the people who do play to win and later brag about it with monochrome World maps don't use cheats or only VERY few.
In EB many people play with a lot of RP and thus sometimes need to cheat in order to get certain things into their story some of them even write a AAR about it and can't afford the AI behaving stupid ;) or they fancy that an utterly powerfull and rich ... Macedonia would at some point adapted TABs or cataphracts due to challenges that they did not face in history and thus are not implemented into EB. or the vanilla marian reforms, when you play as KH and conquer rome whereas you have problems against Seleucid Phalanxes, It is probable that they would also adapt phalanxes no matter how many people live in capua....(whereas I've never did this although the situation occured to me twice I didn't even take the unrealisic yet fair solution - conquering Capua upgradeing it and gifting it to rome(and conquering it back))

to be honest I sometimes use force diplomacy and move character(as the AI generals seemto be independant of their Diplomats and naval invasions are very rare) and often even auto win when I'm not in the mood to fight an easy battle or one of those endless 5-10 HAs and Cantanks against Grey/Yellow levy stack fights that take a lot of time but always end the same way when fought on the battle map and the opposite when autocalced(not to mention AI generals). I admit that and I'm not prod of it but I play the game to play the game and not to conquer the world or to fullfill my VCs. and I only brag about things I accieved without cheating - fighting superior forces etc.

in a nutshell cheating is ok as long as it's not against a other player(in MP) and you don't brag(or be proud) about what you accieved with Cheat support.