Its not a bug, its a feature. You only help your allie if someone attack him an he don't attack. Because if he attack the adversary he know that he fight an can arrange the attack orders with you.

hope my english is not to bad :)

It's just like Xolgrim says. If you want your allies to attack, then they have to give attack orders, otherwise it would be too easy to drag your so-called friends into a fight they don't want.

I'm sorry to hear this is intended this way... it basically has me abandoning my ally for following the rules. From the (english) rules, under "Taking sides":

"Allies help the defenders automatically even when the defender itself attacked."

That's the exact opposite of what you just told me...

You're correct - accoridng to he rules, you should have defended in a situation like the one you describe. I'll have a closer look.

It says in the code that attacking units do not get help from allies, whether or not they got attacked. I remember now that it was possible to exploit this (if an attacker used a dummy faction to attack himself, he could drag allies into an unwanted fight). The german rules are updated, but it seems the english rules did not get that update. I'll make sure it gets fixed in there.

Thank you for your report, and I'm sorry about the inaccuracy in the manual costing your ally troops, but I think there's not much I can do other than fix the rules so it won't happen again.

Rules updated.