Question about War for Throne FFA etiquette/rules

Hi,

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to explain why I'm asking what seems like a stupid question. 

I know that for the main 4-player FFA games, it is forbidden to "team up" against other players, and for good reason. We even clicked on a thing to agree not to team up. However, I am confused about the "War for Throne" variant (I don't know if the rules are the same for this one) for 2 reasons:

1) Quite a lot of higher-ranked players started telling me how bad I am at this game (it's true I'm not a star player, but this seemed weird). Normally, I don't care what others say, but because I started to hear it a lot, like, for instance, someone said "my opposite is worthless, just get him", or "you're useless" stuff like that, but I wasn't getting that in other variants. So, I decided to look up info about this variant and 

2) I found a post here on chess.com that emphasized how important it is in War for Throne to be a help to the player opposite you. That is, if the player opposite you is getting attacked, you're supposed to then attack the same color who is attacking your opposite.  So, after reading that post, I followed those instructions and found that SOMETIMES I did start doing much, much better, but other times, worse, using this strategy, depending on the player opposite me (so, some use this playing style and others don't). And THEN

3) I just got threatened to be reported for teaming up, which really confused me and I felt really bad because I'm very against doing that in other variants, and I just want to play the game right--whatever that is!  I thought it was proper etiquette in this one. So, now I don't know what the rules really are!

Could what I read have been an old post and rules have changed? Would that be how some people seem to automatically know and follow the "help your opposite" playing style while others don't?  

Thanks, anyone who knows the answer to this one!