I made a sudden realization about a personal motivation.

[SangoProduction]

My ultimate fantasy is to take a ****hole of a place, and make it good and desirable.
It's been 20-30 years of gaming, and I've never noticed that it's such a primal desire, that I've actually been expressing subconsciously. Up until I was basically chain ganged into playing Desolation, a true epitome of "Well, this place is garbage," and my reaction was "I could really fix this place up."
Perhaps it was due to the altered headspace due to rather... traumatic events of late, but I actually noticed that pattern of thinking... and actually found the realization of the thought to be the strangest thing of all. Especially in retrospect.

But yeah, I play EU4, CK2/3, Vikky 2/3, and so on. And I always play as an underdog nation, aspiring to take on The Greats. I've played those sorts of games for over 15 years now. (With mods, granted.)
I knew that's what I liked in those games. And I had also falsely associated it with "challenge." Although I think having risk and pushback against your goals is important to make them feel meaningful.
But I didn't think it was something that generalized, until it finally clicked with that Desolation game.

So... Why am I sharing this? Because I've got delusions of importance?
Not so much.

I think that in knowing this more baseline drive in my motivations, I could more reliably find the games (and perhaps other things) that best fit what I enjoy. (Which is a problem, because I do tend to find that games that other people run are just boring to me. But I could never nail down exactly why.)
And, perhaps it's a "duh" statement, but finding the true driving force behind what makes you enjoy what you enjoy, when you dig to the deepest layer, would help you to do the same.

But as obvious as the statement may be... It did take a huge amount of time for me to even notice my own underlying motivation, and piece everything together for myself. And again, it was during an altered headspace, where I was actually thinking about my thoughts.
This does, perhaps, hint that although the statement is obvious, finding the answer ras to what motivates you is much less self-evident than it would appear.

[Biggus]

I don't know any of those games you're talking about, but I do get the part about enjoying fixing things. I only play D&D for about 2 hours a week (and have had long periods where I'm not playing it at all) but I've had countless hours of enjoyment tinkering with the rules (especially the epic rules, which are even more broken that the normal ones) and trying to find elegant solutions to all the problems. I'll be quite disappointed if I ever fix it all to my satisfaction (but since that'll probably take 100+ years I'm not worried currently).

[Crake]

I don't think it's that much of a fantasy honestly, I think it's a pretty core human desire. I came to a similar realisation myself honestly, after going through about a year of renovations, and completely overhauling my apartment, making it look and feel 10x better than it was, for a fraction of the cost it would have taken to just pay other people to do, it felt good. Now that it's over, I find my evenings feeling much emptier without some sort of project or goal to work on like that, not some collection of numbers that says "you made 3% progress on your goal today!", but actual, physical work, that you can see grow with every day that you work on it.

Kinda makes me want to pick up another project, maybe take some junker car, and turn it into a retro, cyberpunk-esque custom job, haven't decided yet, but I definitely know where you're coming from, and from introspection, it really feels like it's a core desire, not some fantasy beyond reach. I guess the kicker is that we have to take a step away from the digital world, when it kinda feels sometimes like it's buried it's hooks so deep into us, we have no idea how to even begin to escape.