Heroes 5.5 WarGame Edition - Tactical Edition.

Yes, the penalty for ranged attacks is equal to half damage.
That is, the combination of these two abilities and melee combat without a penalty gives 50% damage at all ranged attack distances, with 100% damage in melee combat.
In other words, at long range, Adepts are as strong as full-fledged ranged units, and at close range, it is better for them to fight in melee.

P.S. Nargott, I've described what I want (more variety in buildings, perhaps focusing on any tier as the main one) and what I don't want (a rigid forced order of construction, such as, for example, a base with low-tier buildings - forts - high-tier buildings, and only in that order, so that you can only build ranged units).
As for how to do this in practice, I think you know better!

Our desires regarding what we want are the same. I have minimized the forced order, but it is not always possible to completely remove the dependencies (because sometimes this will lead to a reduction in effective variety).
As a rule, the logic is that higher tiers always require some intermediate tiers.

Added 56 minutes later
There is a very interesting and important idea:
To link hero classes and unit upgrade types.
For example, Knights correspond to basic humans, Paladins to the first upgrade, and Inquisitors to the alternate upgrade.
As soon as a hero enters the garrison of his native city (inside and in the first slot), all his native troops are automatically recolored in his color.
What does this allow? It allows you to freely play with all 3 upgrades, starting from the first week, without being tied only to the base. At the same time, the army of each hero can be easily stylized according to his class. And if you need to mix different upgrades in one army, then the easiest way to do this is to build an upgraded building and change the upgrade manually.

The only problem is mini-artifacts. If mini-artifacts were attached to creatures that will be automatically recolored in this way, then the mini-artifacts will be lost (technically, this cannot be bypassed).