Very close, but Rise of Nations is indeed the better game IMO. The thing that turned off some people from Rise of Nations is that you are looking at long matches if playing at a high difficulty against the AI or online.
I've actually never played Rise of Nations or a ton of RTS games for that matter, but damn did I play a lot of Age II.
It's weird that I don't like them that much because when I was young my uncle was heavy into Command & Conquer games. I'd sit there and watch him play those joints for hours, but I'm not interested in playing them at all today.