Questions for a civ event i'm making

So I've been hosting minecraft events for 2 years now, which originally started as me just hosting smp's which people would just keep on fighting and killing 'til i later on moved with the Civ Events idea which I guess at firsthand didn't really work out much because people didn't get the point of what civ events were meant to be so as you'd expect people would keep playing the events like its 2b2t, but I've later on managed to make adjustments and the civ event's i've been doing works well now, except for a few problems.

The first one whenever a nation has like some sort of betrayal or they're at war with somebody they'd take it really personal to the point they'd hold grudges for next seasons, even with me trying to make rules to counter it they'd just find another loophole which the lore/plot never really expands since then.

Second of all, how many days is it preferable for the civ events to last? I've always done it so that it's only Friday's to Sunday's considering most people are guaranteed to play throughout those days, as for the past events i've done where it would last for a week straight it's either the server just dies out because of inactivity, timezone differences so they can't join, etc.

Third, what other items/features should be banned while to keep a more realistic concept off of these civ events? I know nether and end should obviously be disabled, alongside ender pearls, but should flame/fire aspect be banned too?

Lastly, people at least just a small majority of them still have a "smp mindset" where they think it should just be pure anarchy and spread chaos, although it's kind of good to make some villains they tend to push things out of their limits, for example some dude wanted to cart pvp or mace pvp which obviously breaks the "realism concept" i'm aiming for.