I deleted all metadata tags from Calibre and changed the settings so it doesn't download tags any longer.
When you get hundreds of books, only have a few collections generates exactly what the OP didn't want, collections of large numbers of books.
Only way to have hundreds of books and smaller collections is finer graduations.
And you can do folder-like setup, where collections have multiple names.
So you can have as collections:
Fiction-SciFi-Asimov
Fiction-Thriller-Patterson
Fiction-Mystery-XXXX
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