I haven't really seen it to be an issue in TA-derived games.

I guess because economy still requires territory control, and a bigger territory is harder to defend ?

Also it's probably not a coincidence that these games have a lot of units dealing area damage, and most importantly, units cannot shoot through each other, and when they try it can often end in friendly fire, which makes snowballing weaker ?

Anyway, desperate situations where the underdog eventually manages to turn the tide are not uncommon. I even recently seen it happen in an AI vs AI match !