RTS Question.

[Chemical]

Several games spring to mind

Europa Unversalis. It is more of a RISK game rather than a tactics game. You recruit soldiers, upgrade them and improve land under your control but you dont actually control the soldiers, they just stand and shoot at each other and depending on various stats on side wins or loses. It is not really RTS or TBS. It depends to what speed you set the game to make your moves. When my empire got really big I had to slow down the game to pretty much a standstill.

Total War games. They alternate between a TBS where you build your cities and raise your armines, manage your taxes etc. And when you actually enter a battle then you control your troops and lead them to victory. There is no base building during the battle scenes, you play with what you get.

Warhammer 40K Dawn of War Dark Crusade. You pick which provinces to attack and how many troops you commit to defending each province. When you attack the battle resolves in a typical RTS fashion. Dawn Of War 2 will have a similar technique, except they are going to remove all base building from the single player to make it more of a tactics game and be closer to the tabletop.

Those are the games I can think of that involve big overall maps in which you pick and choose the territories to attack.