A coupe of points:
1) I don't feel each encounter needs to be dramatic. In fact, some mundane encounters set up the larger dramatic ones quite well in my opinion. If they area all dramatic they kinda don't stand out as much. The overall drama can be enhanced by having some simpler combats.
2) If you handwave or SC simple encounters then it kinda telegraphs that these encounters are not important, which seriously reduces the tension. If I have a fight with 20 minion and a single standard, it can look like a fight with 20 standards and single elite. When combat starts the ruse is basically up, but how the PCs approach it can be very different.
3) I think a 3 round fight can be tactically interesting.
4) I think a 3 round fight can be strategically interesting
That my work for the group you play with, but it is not how I run games or how my group likes it. That is way to much DM fiat form my tastes.
Hey, I don't think its worth getting into a huge debate over, but I would point out that your number 1 and your number 2 are telling against each other. IMHO nobody wants to sit through dull unimportant dross at the table. Point 2 isn't so bad, but it clearly tells me that you always want to avoid point 1!
As for point 2... I don't feel like I need to use that sort of ruse to create tension. There's a LOT of ways to create tension, and if you meet 20 opponents and we throw down the battlemat then tension is there, because its a big fight! Why bother to then let everyone down with a bunch of minions? I mean, minions are great, but I would rather use them for the sort of set dressing they are made for, "yeah, you carve your way through those 20 ninjas and confront the big guy!" This is one of the reasons I found all the arguments for 'tough minions' and such to be largely missing the point too. They SHOULD be trivial.
Now, when I expand the scope of my thinking from "that bunch of minions over there" to "that encounter over there" then I think "Well, this encounter is trivial, its purpose is to provide some verisimilitude/color and allow for a chance that the alarm gets set off, but there's no real combat stakes. I know, I'll make it an SC!" I mean, you probably can't do that in the midst of a combat, hence minions, but in the larger framework of an adventure I see a lot of these things as low complexity SCs with tangential stakes, they can bring about slightly different downstream results, but they're not presenting something like the chance of defeat that would really fully justify the table time expense of combat.
I do get that 4.5e has a little bit different goal.