I had an idea about making a SC mod.
Terran would be colonists and therefore "dwarves". Each generated world would be a planet.
You would make a command center with your scv's. The role of trees would be taken by crystal spires.
I'd still have to throw somehow vespene gas in. Probably in smelter reactions
Protoss would replace elves, in that they would start out peacfully, but you could anger them if you harvest too much crystal. "You must construct additional pylons!" That's a memorable quote.
Zerg would serve as both goblin and kobold. I'd really like to make various zerg attack you, not only zerglings. If anybody has any moding experience to do this please help.
I need to somehow make other resources beside vespene gas and crystal to be useless. I really don't want my fire bats fight with obsidian swords, or my SCV's to build a rock command center.
I'd probably feature vespene gas as a rock that you would mine out in layers. You would fuel some things with it. Metal would have to stay though.
I really have no moding skills so if anybody has good ideas throw them in.
I was going to call this a preposterous and impossible idea, but after a bit of thought, it's surprisingly possible.
Through tilesets and renaming wood matgloss, you can easily change trees to crystal.
If you go through the .txt files for conversations, I believe the entry for wood diplomacy is in there, just change that.
I don't know much about multiple creature civs, but you could definitely use tags if you don't mind removing existing creatures.
You could easily mod soil levels to not produce rock, and only contain clusters of minerals.