Not gone but Im still trying to figure out how they work now too. In my last siege battle I cant figure out if they just surrender once you take the capture point or if you have to wait down the counter, because last time as soon as I captured it they surrendered, though I dont know if that was because the remaining defenders all routed.

And I actually like minor settlement battles. Its a happy medium I think between full fledged sieges and open land battles. There are no walls but there are still streets to fight through so you can potentially hold back a larger and superior force with the garrison. An open field battle wouldnt be good for the minor settlement battles as the quality of the garrisons is usually pretty bad and on an open land battle they would get massacred really quickly. But at least in the minor settlements they can potentially hold back an enemy because there are fewer chances to flank them. For instance in my most recent siege battle, three of my mid-range units were held back by a single unit of levy hoplites because I couldnt flank them and they had good armor values when hit from the front.