The real issue with CityRP's is nobody actually RP's, its really the players fault.
The OP is hosting a City RPG, not a City RP. RPGs involve a mod that allows for the game to be more involved (such as using actual money to buy actual items and have actual hunger instead of pretending to do/have all of those things). RPs just utilize the imaginations of those involved. You don't need to RP on an RPG - in fact, it is frowned upon. It is a game to be played, not imagined.
In the world of City RPGs, it is everyone's fault for how terrible a reputation City RPGs have. The players are at fault for mucking up the server with stuffty buildings (if not supplied by the host), the administrators/moderators are responsible for ruining the server via badmining, and the host is responsible for not making a good server in the first place. But, the City RPG mod, above all, is the most at fault. The mod needs to be changed - everyone who cannot code uses Ibanz's, which still holds a quality associated with early versions of Blockland. A revolution in the way we do City RPG needs to come. This involves NOT USING A PUBLIC MOD. Whether it's using events or using a mod, hosts need to do their own thing that is not similar to others'. The reason people act the way they do in every City RPG is because:
If the player joins a City RPG using a mod like Ibanz's, they know they can just richard around, annoying other people because they can just go to another server JUST LIKE IT, then richard around again. The servers that are unique are the best and most popular (with good players, not the richarding-around ones) BECAUSE they are unique. Players don't want to be banned from these servers because they can't go play on another server just like it - that one server is the only server with the opportunity to do exactly what is hosted. Remove the cloned mod, you remove the stuff.
Also, the good players (the ones that don't richard around and don't care about the server) are typically the older ones, have established a basic level of quality that they would accept as a server to play on. Unfortunately, due to CRPGs having user-made buildings, they don't have the highest quality of buildings, and so these good players don't join them. These creates a concentration of bad players (those that richard around), which creates the illusion that the server has gone to stuff. All servers possess bad players, but when there are fewer good players, the server seems more bad-player-ridden. Also, CRPGs allow for more player access to default Blockland functions (like building, event-based playertype changing, spamming), so there is more for the players to richard around with. This is why TDMs appear to be the best servers, because there is very little for the players to richard with (other than shooting their teammates in the ass). Remove access to these additional things and you lessen the bad players' ability to richard around, and thus reduce their ability to ruin the server.
I did the same thing as you, I made my own CRPG server. Unfortunately, it was stuff, as all of them are. I considered the ideas above and more three years ago. So, I started a process that I am still doing to this day, and that is to make a CRPG out of events. It's taken so long because I have evolved what I wanted out of the CRPG. I have learned from mistakes and fixed them. Some of these things involves getting rid of those ugly-ass pits required by Ibanz's mod to build. Players are able to buy pre-made buildings, then build furniture in them. This gets rid of the ugliness factor affecting the look of CRPGs. Events are off limits to players. Generally, player involvement with anything but playing the game is gone. Players focus on living a life, not imagining it up, not building everything involved with it. I have done this insofar as to possibly create a new game type, which I am dubbing a City Simulation.
When this is complete, a single player on the server will be able to enjoy the game without feeling they are missing out on something (other people). Similarly, a server with 30 people will enjoy the same experience. Making everything pre-made has alleviated a lot of issues that CRPGs have had in the past. I suggest pushing towards this goal as well.
Also, i suggest not having ANY rules. This gives players nothing to complain about. All you have to do is limit what they can do to the point that they cannot break any rule you would have given them.
City's are hard to build. I've been making cities for years. Trust me. They are a royal pain in the ass. And anyone who says they can build a turn road in their sleep deserves to have a cactus shoved up their ass, because obviously their idea of a "turn" if a square turn.
It's all about the style. Square turns make for very good turns if that is how the rest of the build is formatted.
Also, turns are easy to make, its making them look good/making them work with the rest of the roads that is hard to do.
