What do I (and my friend) need to do to play 2v2 ranked?

Yesterday, for the first time ever, I played online. Up to this point I've just played bots, but a friend also got the game and we were finding the bots to be too easy (when they played slowly) or too difficult (when rushing us) so we decided to give online mode a shot.

We jumped into Quick Play and had a few games. At first we thought we were dominating, but soon realised that you can't do anything as a Cavalry Civ to 40 Briton Longbowmen and 20 Spearmen, while boxed in by the forest. Our other games had similar outcomes (the most fun one being the one where we rushed to center to secure the relicts and quickly got overrun by enemy forces that used their time efficiently).

The people were just too good and we thought playing ranked would be more balanced, but alas, we couldn't. It limits us to 1v1 games since our scores are 955.

So my question is what can we do to play 2v2 ranked? Must both of us level up in 1v1 first? Can only one of us level up and invite the other to the party? What must we do to join the Low ELO Legends?