The shipping idea of white sounds good for gameplay, and it would be more like the show, but I'm not sure as this would be much of a balance. If I were the Dominion, I'd just start sending massive fleets out to protect my convoys. Then it would take a huge enemy fleet to actually impact the shipments, or an incredibly advanced intelligence branch. Either way, it seems like it would be difficult enough to prove not much of a balance unless 2 or more powers were coordinating their efforts--Starfleet tries to intercept the convoys while the Tal'shiar tries to destroy them from within. Also, going off of the original BOTF combat play, wouldn't the white ships be able to withdraw from combat quickly as a non-combat ship, making an attempt to attack it difficult at best when it has guards? All of these thoughts just seem like it wouldn't serve as much of a balance.
Actually, I would think of changing the "Food" resource to something more like "Sustenance" for all empires. Then white would fall into this category since it seems like the Dominion largely uses Jem'hadar, but the Jem'hadar don't eat. That would make more sense to me.
Obviously, the Dominion is by nature ridiculously unbalanced, but for gameplay you don't want such an overwhelming foe to contend with unless you can start mining wormholes. Honestly, I would think a balance for the Dominion would be that their ships have weak shields/hulls--a Bird of Prey seems to take a Jem'hadar fighter out with a couple of shots--on their easily produced ships. Powerful weapons, probably, but easily destroyed.
Now, responding to the Matrress's point about balancing the Changelings out with other resources, I honestly hadn't been thinking about giving the other empires a counter resource since Changelings would be difficult to have, few in number (maybe at the highest development level get 1 every 2 or 3 turns), and only stick around for so long before deciding to return to the Great Link. However, when you mentioned the idea of giving the other empires a counter resource, I started thinking and figured this might be a way actually to play to each empire's strengths. This is what I came up with.
Each empire would have a unique personnel resource, like a separate officer pool. The Dominion obviously would have Changelings which offer a small bonus to anything they are assigned to with a heavy bonus to intelligence, the Klingons could have Order of the Bat'leth Warriors (major bonus to all combat actions, especially ground combat), Cardassian and Romulan Obsidian Order and Tal'shiar Operatives, respectively (major bonuses to all intelligence operations), although the Federation I'm a little less sure of. I was thinking of either Starfleet Engineers ("those legendary Starfleet engineers who can turn rocks into replicators") who would give a considerable bonus to build/repair times/costs or Starfleet Support Personnel who would be Medical, Scientific, and Engineering officers who give considerable bonuses to all of their fields when assigned (including all of these might be too much of a bonus depending on other weights, I'm not sure).
Of course, these unique groups would have to have drawbacks. I think a needed weight would be that they only stick around for so long, maybe each only being available for deployment for 20 turns or so. Otherwise, the Dominion could spend years building, saving up all of its Changelings, until they encounter an Alpha Quadrant race, then suddenly flood the race with 300 incredibly effective spies which cripple the enemy. For the Dominion, this could be because the Changelings refuse to stay away from the Great Link for too long--something which the shows have portrayed--while the other races could simply say that the people eventually die off since no one's immortal.
Also, there would have to be a strict limit to how quickly this resource can be created, although it would have to be somewhat different for each empire. The Klingons could probably put together a small fleet crewed by Order of the Bat'leth Warriors while Starfleet could put together and entire corps of engineers to assist in building/repairing/upgrading fleets. The Dominion, on the other hand, would have to be limited to individual Changelings since those few would be incredibly powerful/useful (there were only 4 Changelings on Earth).
In this way, each empire could more easily fall back on its unique strengths. The Romulans could frame the Federation for sabotage of the Klingons with their Tal'shiar operatives, spies virtually guaranteed to succeed in their tasks. In response, the Klingons mobilize their Bat'leth Warriors to launch a devastating first strike against the Federation while Starfleet Engineers rush starship production and system defenses through to respond to the threat. With the Klingon ueber-warriors busy, the Romulan navy can strike the Klingons from behind. This might be difficult to program, and granted there are other means of tapping into the natural talents of a race, but this would give a sort of emergency boost which allows more fine-tuning to a race's special talents. (Think of Age of Mythology's god powers.) The bonuses of course could be dependent on the technology level--at the very beginning Starfleet Engineers might reduce build/repair time by 1% whereas by the highest technology level the bonus maybe is 15%.
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