Brand New Player - Multiplayer or Not?

Hi All,

I've been playing a different RTS hardcore for many, many years (check my history if you care) and I finally took the plunge and bought the DE version of this game as it was, obviously, my gateway into RTS and gaming and I've read nothing but positive things about it online (I think it's phenomenal, btw). I've been watching a lot of videos on YouTube (Hera's 0-2K and his coaching videos) and playing the game whenever I can - both Campaign and 1v1 vs AI on Arabia (as apparently that's one of the best 1v1 maps?) and I can fairly comfortably beat the AI (Standard) in the Feudal Age - I'll probably move on to Moderate today at some point.

Anyway, I'm interested in getting better at the game (obviously) and I jumped into the Multiplayer from the game menu last night and I spectated a random 2v2 match (I think the players were 1300 rating or something). I also noticed there were a lot of "NOOBS ONLY' lobbies which I was going to jump into but always got distracted and missed them.

My question is three parts. First, should I continue to practice vs AI and watching multi-player games until I'm compotent enough?

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Second, if multiplayer is the way to go - at the end of the day PvP is more real-time than an AI ever will be - are all 2v2 games starting behind a fully walled base or was that just the map I seen?

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Third, if I do decide to jump into multiplayer I'm going to start with 2v2 (so I can potentially leverage off my ally). However, as someone who has literally only had the game for 24 hours (and total steam played time of <2 hours) is it really disrespectful/frowned upon to jump straight into a ranked team game? If so, is my best bet just to play 1v1 over and over until my rating is low enough I meet other players just as bad as me?

Many thanks in advance!