Ugh, layout is a pain. I'm intentionally avoiding most of it with Segira by going with a style that basically predates modern digital document layout software, drawing from old military manuals and Twilight 2000 for inspiration with a handful of space-filler art. I'm not looking forward to Genship Exiles, which is going to have some truly fantastic art in it, but will be a royal pain to actually layout as a result.
I find that the artists who work well are the equivalent of national treasures. I'm kinda hoping to introduce one who I've had a really good experience with to Steem, but I'm kinda unsure how to evangelize it best.
I will confess that writing for games is probably my favorite part. I got my start in homebrew, creating just massive documents that I didn't have any real responsibility to do anything other than write for. Now that I'm trying to get into "professional" game design, it's more important to really dot the i's and cross the t's and make things look nice. At least I can add an absurd level of familiarity with word processing and desktop publishing software to my resume if I ever need a new day job. I just hope that at some point I can add community interaction to that list of "Things I have experience doing as a hobbyist/small business owner."
I'd never really thought of EU4 and Minecraft together, but I can see the similarities. Really, both are pretty keen on emergent play. Traditionally I compare EU4 to Dwarf Fortress due to how incredibly deep the systems in those games are. I'm always surprised when I bump into a kid who plays something like Stellaris in their free time, but then I realize that it's sort of an act of mastery in and of itself; if you can play Stellaris, you can play anything.
One thing that I think would be interesting is to see an interactive tutorial for Stellaris/EU4 that scaffolds the player into running an empire, tied into a roleplaying scenario where the player takes on the role of someone responsible for just an aspect or two of their controlled civilization at pivotal moments.