G'day and thanks Devoras!

Firstly, here's my explanation of religion in The Lord of the Rings. There's three types of religion in Middle-earth for those who aren't angelic.

The Free Peoples of Middle-earth
To the readers of LotR the free peoples are perceived as secular, they don't have temples, pray or have priests. They have a knowledge of the History of Middle-earth and know who the Valar and Maia are. They reject Morgoth.

The Forces of Darkness
Enslavement to Morgoth and his agents. A nihilistic and destructive worldview.

Men of Darkness
These people have a corrupted knowledge of the Valar and Maiar. They worship Morgoth or his agents through cults.

None of this or my thoughts on the topic are currently in Realms in Exile. We should have renamed "religion" in the code to "macro-culture" because that is what we are using it for. Consider it a bug that it's still referenced as religion in Realms.

Sorry for the confusion. We're working hard and would love the support you could give if you're willing to write events or proofread our work like what you've done here. Thanks again!

From the current Realms in Exile code this is a small sample of the state of races, macro-cultures and cultures:

Some of the "macro-cultures" - replacing religion. We need a much better name for this, and more work needs to go into it.
Edain

Black Numenorean

Eotheod

Dwarves

Haladian

Melkor

Noldor

Teleri

Vanya

Some of the cultures, I've just focused on the complexity of the Realms in Exile, the peoples in Arnor, Gondor and the Black Numenoreans. This too is distorted to fit with gameplay and the systems that are used in Realms. You'll notice a lot of cross-over. I don't know how much more work will go into cultures. This isn't my area of coding ability, although I love researching this stuff.

Edain
People whose ancestors are from Numenor

• Numenorean
  
• Black Numenorean
  
• Dunedain
  
• Southern Dunedain

Edain Mixed
Multicultural people whose ancestors are from Numenor and from the pre-colonial population.

• Arnorian
  
• Gondorian

Banadunaim
Multicultural people whose ancestors are from Numenor (and who are likely Black Numenoreans) and from the pre-colonial population.

• Banadunaim

Haldadian
Pre-colonial populations of people from Gondor and Arnor and the nearby countries. They are related to the Edain through the House of Haleth.

• Dunlending
  
• Calending
  
• Druwaithing
  
• Daoine
  
• Andrasting
  
• Eredrim
  
• Ethirfolk
  
• Ishmalogim

Harondorian
Populations of southern people from southern Gondor (Harondor) and the nearby southern countries.

• Harondorian
  
• Donan
  
• Haruzani

Haradrim
People from the south of Middle-earth. The Haradrim are known to the people of Gondor, the Black Numenoreans of Umbar have contact with them - and they are in LotR.

• Haradrim
  
• Qarsag
  
• Siranian

Thanks for the feedback. .

So if the macro culture is replacing religion then it makes sense in the way which this is done.

In the case for Men, you can break them down to 3 groupings, given that culture in this mod is defined as race. Here goes.

Culture or race if you like: Edain
Macro cultures which will replace religion I recommend to be:

1. High Men. Numenoreans, Dunedain, Lesser Dunedain and Black Numenoreans. In essence those descent from Numenor in one shape or another. Black Numeroeans will naturally be more inclined towards Melkor, but I list them here for sake of clarity.
2. Middle Men. Anorians, Gondorian, and everyone in the Haldadian group. In essence those folk who did not mingle, intermarry or breed with the high men, and was not swayed by Melkor. Anorians and Gondorians can be hard to determine in that sense, because they did mingle with high men in the end, so I`ll give Dev discretion in terms of balance.
3. Southrons and Easterlings. As the name implies, all in the Harondorian and Haradrim group including Rhun and Khand.


For the Elves.

Culure or Race: Eldar

Can be split down to 2 groups:

1. Teleri. For the lore fanatics like myself, the Teleri is a gigantic group, and they are divided into so many micro cultures its hard to keep track of them all. The best way to split these are to distinguish them from who attempted the travel to Valinor, and the ones that tried but stopped BEFORE crossing into Beleriand. The ones who crossed into Beleriand will become the Sindar,and the ones who did not, became the Silvan Elves. I would personally put the Silvan and Sindar Elves into the same culture group as the Italic group puts Romans and Etruscans into the same culture group, but with its own micro culture.

2. Noldor: Technically there are 3 microcultures in this group. One group which is from the House of Feanor and his 7 sons, one from the House of Fingolfin from where the game has added Gondolin in for some odd reason, and the last of the House of Finrod Felagund.
Last mentioned is the brother of Galadriel which puts me at pause why Lorien isnt technically a Noldo kingdom, even though the majority of the populace is Silvan.
For simplicity sake I would call this group simply Noldor as all 3 groups did intermarry and mingle especially after the War of the Jewels was concluded.

Side note: Vanyar is mentioned in the Silmarillion and is the third group of Eldar besides the Noldor and Teleri. However this elvish group NEVER left Valinor ( with bar exception for the partcipation in the War of Wrath),and hence pointless in adding.

These are my suggestions and please get back to me if more clarification is required.

That's pretty much what we've got. ;D

Indeed, but please do change the names for Men to the 3 groups. That will make it look clean and more structured.