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[JobLeonard]

I've heard good things about the Cossacks games in the past. Not really an RTS guy, so I can't say for sure. Here's a decent looking Let's Play, takes a while to really get into battle though (you can skip to the ten minute mark).

[Gregg Williams]

Ah interesting, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that both of those games tend to have mass amounts of units, are 3D based and tend to have fun with zoom levels.

[Klaim]

Yes, in particular Supreme Commander fixed the lack of formation system in Total Annihilation, by implementing a new kind of formation system that would make agents keep relative formation while moving like a group. Basically, two groups could cross without interacting much because they kept rigid formation with the group.

They did some article online about that, called it "Flowfield" : http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/tafxyc/supreme-commander-2-flowfield-pathfinding-doc

Also, depending on the space structure of the game, this might not be a good approach. For example a game like Homeworld or Homeworld 2 really needs to think in attack waves. Still the ships do what they can to keep organized. It's really interesting to see because you can have different level of dodging, which means they are more or less allowed to break formation depending on the player request.

[JobLeonard]

Yet formation becomes even more important in 3D space, I would expect? Being able to spread out or to focus attacks to a single point (X-claw formation with many small weak units to take out big units) comes to mind.