Annoying camera height difficulties

What happens when you apply a camera with certain stats on uneven terrain is the annoying fact that the camera's z offset from the ground is not actualy measured from the ground at the camera target position, but from some average ground heigth in that area. Thus, if you try to move a unit in such a way that it would always appear in the center of the camera view no matter how that camera is moving, that can't be done because the camera might be higher or lower than you expect it to be based on this stat.

Now to my question. Is it possible to either:
1) modify how the camera works so that it doesn't sample terrain in a larger area, but simply places it's target point at the specified z offset from the terrain at that point, or
2) determine how the camera works to be able to figure out it's target point's actual height above terrain?

*bumpity* Anyone?

I would bet the game just samples points in a fixed radius around the camera, then averages them.

Discovering the formula should just be a matter of preparing terrain with very high cliffs, and trying to discover the number of points and the radius.