Without measuring, the 5mm range you mentioned seems pretty close to the differences between my pure road setup and my all-road setup (that I also occasionally ride on single track). I want it closer to a "road" feel, so it's just a little more relaxed than my road bike but I run 650B wheels when off road so that to me helps make it feel a little more nimble.

My Exploro is set up so the reach to the hoods is the same as my Tarmac, but about 1cm higher. My reach to the tops is a bit shorter on the Exploro because the bars on that bike have a really long reach.

I thought about trying to match them 100%, but figured it probably wasn't a bad idea for a 200 mile race bike to be a little more upright than a 60 minute race bike.

That's too much thinking for me.

If it were me I would just buy a disc brake cross bike to begin with and then get a lower rise stem (or flip the stem that came with it) and call it a day.

Then just swap wheelsets.

I'm gonna tell ya you'll have more fun with more tire on a cross bike you use with road wheels sometimes than a roadish bike you use with a compromised tire size.

I'm far from a CX expert, but after one of my n00b CX races a pro dude walked by and said, "Roadie bro, lower your saddle 2cm. Thank me later." Felt weird and wrong for a second, but did another race after that, and it was a huge help in terms of bike control - controlling nutter descents, being able to effectively manual over obstacles. Didn't feel like I was having trouble laying down Watts on the power sections.

And because lowering the saddle has some of the same effects as raising the stack and even lengthening the reach, it might be one very easy way to adjust a bike to conditions that doesn't involve a lot of compromise. Up on road days, lower a bit on dirty days.

Or if you want to spend money and add weight, there are now "gravel dropper" posts.

That’s a lot of unnecessarily splitting hairs.

For me all road and road are same. Gravel is -1cm reach +1 stack.

I would say your 'all road' is gonna be very similar to your road setup. For cx, you will get a lot more variation. For me, I come from a mtn bike background, so my cx position was always shorter and higher than most.

My all road position is the same reach, and just not as much drop compared to road. I like to descent in my drops on gravel, so I tend not to run a higher position to feel really comfortable on my drops.

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I settled on a position that is 2cm higher than my current fairly aggressive road position, but the same reach.
I think I read on here by some fast guys that most ride with their hoods position to low, making their drops REALLY low.
I think my all road position will improve everything.

I would agree that many set their road position to be close to optimal when riding in the hoods. For gravel, you don’t really want that - you need to have the drops in a place that doesn’t feel too low as you’ll need to be in that position more often for better control when descending and putting out power on rough terrain.

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I did this as well with my Exploro.when I originally set it up. I also did some aero testing and realized I was generally more aero with the higher bar position because my forearms are flatter while my upper body stays the same. One of my winter projects was raising bar height on my road bikes.