Neat. I'd been working on a race something like that myself for use in PBW, but hadn't had the guts to try it yet; I cranked their resource production way up and virtually crippled all their combat stats. My idea was to have them seek out a powerful ally to buy protection from. Haven't had the guts to actually try them out yet, though; it would require a dangerous amount of trust.
If I manage to make them valuable enough, I can imagine several different races going to war with each other over who gets to protect me.