Besides creating units, is there any way to detect who your ally is? Using death counts or something... I am in desperate need of any assistance!

You can add deaths to your enemies, to your allies. You can do a lot of things.
Just add deaths to this specific unit for your foes and if they don't have deaths for this specific unit, then they are allied to you. You can use a different unit for each player detecting allied status.
If you want you could make everyone unallied at the start, then have them choose there allies via dropship or beacon when you do this you can set a death counter.
That involves no creating units, but not the most..streamlined thing in the world.
You can also detect units owned by allies "Allies commands blah...".
Thanks.
