This is interesting and may reveal additional properties of certain class of CAs.
Yet, as some comments already stated what you do is basically study a subclass of multi-state 2D CAs where specific states from the finite state set have a specific meaning associated.
In general a CA is defined as a dynamical system governed by a local rule operating on the neighborhood configuration and yielding a new state. State set is typically finite. But the actual structure of the states can be anything you like. A valid state can be a tuple of a form (visible state, number of neighbors, sum of neighbors degrees, …). As the maximum neighborhood size is finite and the visible cell states are finite - there is a finite number of such tuples which constitute the state set on which a CA can operate.
Summing up - you are studying CAs in which your multi-state setup has some implied meaning. Still cool and interesting.
Yet, as some comments already stated what you do is basically study a subclass of multi-state 2D CAs where specific states from the finite state set have a specific meaning associated.
In general a CA is defined as a dynamical system governed by a local rule operating on the neighborhood configuration and yielding a new state. State set is typically finite. But the actual structure of the states can be anything you like. A valid state can be a tuple of a form (visible state, number of neighbors, sum of neighbors degrees, …). As the maximum neighborhood size is finite and the visible cell states are finite - there is a finite number of such tuples which constitute the state set on which a CA can operate.
Summing up - you are studying CAs in which your multi-state setup has some implied meaning. Still cool and interesting.