As part of an idea I was recently thinking of I wanted a way to have the environment affect units. Nothing as complicated as only building on special terrain types, though that is in the works, but mostly proximity effects.
I wanted some of the magical orders in my current game to have benefits if their buildings were near certain things. For instance pyromancers whose Motherhouse is by a volcano could gain some special benefits.
Currently my plan is to add a tags system to map objects. Then you can add various things to a unit based on its proximity to objects with the appropriate tag.
For instance some pseudo code:
if (building->isNear(object)) {
applyBuffToUnitsMadeThere()
}
if (building->isNear(object)) {
produceNewResourcesOnTimer()
}
The XML for the unit would be like:
<proximity>
<tag name="volcano">
<enhancement>
//fill in normal enhancement XML here
</enhancement>
</tag>
</proximity>
How useful would that kind of thing be to people?
