Making a 2d/3d RPG

Im currently working on making a game similar to the games in the following screenshots:

http://clanlib.org/~sphair/gfx/defenderstournament.jpg
http://www.xenimus.com/images/shot2.jpg

And ive run into a slight complication, im trying to think of a way to create the same terrain that those 2 games have, ive done this:

I created a giant plane, and textured it with hundreds of little tiled images, but theres 1 problem, im trying to have like say: 10 tiles grass, 10 tiles sand, etc.. but i dont want to convert the game to a tileengine, since thats 2d.

I was wondering how I would make this happen?, do i create 1000s of little planes, and texture each 1 individually?

And my other problem, I want the camera to move over the point where i click on the plane, I have no idea how to implement this.

Again, all help would be appreciated and thanks in advance.

PaYnE