It really comes down to the EL then.
If you're facing lots of fights where your fighters can handle it without the casters using their top level slots then the EL was at a maximum equal to your level +1 if not lower.
Similarly, I can imagine that a 4E party that faces EASY encounters can match the number of encounters that the 3E party faces....
How high level did you get?
In 3E ELs were poorly designed. You could take on an EL+4 encounter with several lower level monsters that couldn't touch a high level fighter. A high level fighter could mow through them with power attack and great cleave.
For example, I once had a fairly high EL fight at 6th level against a ton of ogres. An Ogre is an EL3 by itself and there were 6 of them and bugbears for a much higher EL encounter. But our warrior walked up and mowed them down in a single round due to high strength, power attack with a two handed weapon, and great cleave. Wizards didn't have to expend spells.It was this way at much higher level against Giants as well.
If you noticed in 3E they had EL rooms where an opposing fighter was a CR equal to their level. Let me tell you, a lvl 15 fighter is not a CR 15 fight for an organized party. He is a piece of meat they tear apart. So say you have CR 15 fighter with a bunch of CR 10 henchmen going up against a lvl 13 party. That party is going to rip apart that that opposing force which is considered EL 15 plus. Much higher than the party.
My players crushed many encounters EL+4 at high level. Magic items built up. Priests and wizards had tons of spells to heal the party. The enemies rarely had healing. You had defensive spells that could counter most of what the enemy was trying to do.
I have wonder what the highest level you reached was. We've ran up to lvl 18 in 3.5 and average about lvl 14 or 15 with many of our 3.5 campaigns. This getting troubled by EL+2 encounters did not happen much at all save in end game encounters.
Most modules were designed where the EL was based off multiple present monsters. If you grouped one high CR monster with a bunch of low CR monsters, the party generally annihilated that room by focusing on the High Cr monster. Often times at high level the low CR monsters couldn't touch a well-geared party or were mowed down with utter ease.
I seriously doubt anyone who thinks that the 4E adventuring day is longer than 3E played to very high level or ran in standard designed encounters with one or two high CR creatures and a bunch of low Cr creatures grouped together. Or at least I would love to run in your campaigns and see if I could steam roll them.
I always wonder if most player tactics are poor and most PC casters blow off spells every encounter whether they are needed or not. I run with a few players that try to cast spells every encounter even when they aren't needed, and those groups move much slower than groups when the PC caster sits back and waits to use a spell until it is needed. Also parties that lack dedicated healing priests slow the adventuring day down as well.
But parties that have PC casters that know when to apply pressure and dedicated healing priests that take pride in being good healers, they can go on nearly forever. I've done it many times. I'd love to test against DMs that think they can design EL+3 or 4 encounters appropriately designed that think they can slow an organized, tactical party down in 3E.
I tend to think at the moment that not many people played high lvl 3E DnD and they don't have alot of experience with 4E either. So far I've run in 4E up to lvl 4 and lvl 8. 4E isn't paced badly or anything, but it does have inherent limitations on healing surges that can be probelmatic depending on how a fight goes.
And people's healing surges do not all drop at the same rate. Sometimes a striker or controller takes the brunt of the damage and their healing surges are used much faster than a defender's healing surges. But a great deal of the time the defender's healing surges run out first if they are doing their job. That usually allows for 3 sometimes 4 or 5 encounters per day depending on how tough each encounter is.
But as I said it just depends on how you are used to playing. There will most likely never be a time in 4E where an appropriate level fight will not challenge you. Monsters hit much easier in 4E than in 3E and you don't get anywhere near as many magic items.
Now I don't mind this so much as I like tough fights. The low level 4E game was a cakewalk for my party from lvl 2 to lvl 5. Once we hit lvl 6 we ran into a wall that made the encounters much tougher. The monster ACs and such begin to get very high and the inclusion of controllers and leaders with fairly potent powers has become a serious fight.
Now in 3E the high level game was poorly designed as far as rating encounters went. You could fight many encounters that may have been a high level EL or CR, but were a pathetically weak fight. That doesn't happen so much in 4E, which is nice for DMs.
But it does make the adventuring day shorter with rare exception. Everything in 4E is tougher whether it is kobold and orcs that go toe to toe with you for a long fight or a huge Otyugh that can take on the entire party by itself. Heck, our 3E party at the same level could mow down a group of Otyugh of equivalent level with fair ease and be barely touched. Now one huge Otyugh hammered our entire party knocking two of them unconcious and he was only an elite.
4E is a different game than 3E. The monsters are designed in a much better manner that make them harder to take on. I generally like 4E monster design better because elites and solos can make for a more interesting fight with one huge creature that better simulates a fantasy encounter with one huge creature than anything save for maybe dragons in 3E. But these tougher fights also drain healing and resources faster and thus shorten the day.
