To be fair, what you mention is strategychiv/dread TC and generally GoodCommander, which are fairly obvious. Your concern is well justified however, and I'll explain some more:

The things changed are Battlechiv/dread, which are a lot more complicated. In general, people think that letting the enemy go nets them chivalry. Well, that is the idea, but previously, hardly the case. I've been experimenting with the values a lot and also considered that the average player would have to kill at least a certain percentage to even be able to win a battle (which again is a pre-req) and thus get Battlchiv.

That in mind, you can now kill a considerable portion of the enemy force and still get chiv as long as you don't kill all. Also, as a note aside, capturing prisoners does not count towards the kill percentage it seems, which is quite beneficial. Of course this also means that it is difficult to balance, as its nearly impossible to kill all enemies (you usually tend to capture a lot after killing a bunch) unless you use heavy missiles.
That in mind, chivalry is now easier to obtain especially if you fight battles with difficult odds (less than 1:1) and dread more if you have overwhelming odds (like higher than 2:1 for instance). Its not perfect, but there is some leeway especially with the system of needing 2 points to be set, and generally I was quite happy with the way it worked in my SP campaign testing.