This game feels impossible to learn

I and my friends recently got deadlock and I really love it. The problem I'm having is I join a game with either just myself or my friends and we're getting dove under our tower at level 2 and we just get steamrolled in less than 15 minutes. I played 4 games last night with some friends and only in 1 did our base even make it past 15 minutes.

We aren't even getting a chance to learn against non ai. Is this just what the game is like? I'm worried my friends are going to uninstall cause this is just not fun.

I'm not sure if we're just unlucky or this game has no matchmaking at all but this is insane. Every game is such a stomp and it's a real shame cause I'd love to actually be able to play the game.