Empire Earth literally blows AoE out of the water! You can queue up buildings not just mobile units. The graphics look like you're really there from the zoomed out view. You go through 500,000 years of human history and 200 years into the future. The Art of Conquest Expansion has the Space Age. What I like to do is get planets small and start in the Prehistoric Age. The computer players will have a hard time keeping up with you when you get to the Space Age which means a fairly quick victory. Yes, I use cheats too. It's more fun that way. There is a list of cheats at the bottom of this page.
Comparison:
AoE and EE have to many differences to count. 1, the graphics: Empire Earth graphics are outstanding. Age of Empires on the other hand... Well if you've played AoE you know what I mean. AoE graphics aren't as bad as some but compared to EE ... Need I say more? 2, Gameplay: You can build a lot faster in EE than AoE. For example queuing up buildings. When you play against the AI just set one citizen on defensive buildings, and another on everything else that way you can get to more important things like building an invasion force. 3, Triggers in senario builder: Once you get around the not so user friendly triggers you can really make a cool looking senario with your own cinematics and every thing. My favorite is making natural disasters. EE makes up for the less than user friendly triggers with an extensive manual in the game file in C: drive on your PC. Do you see AoE with cinematics that you control. I don't think so! Does AoE have a campaign builder as detailed as the one on EE? Nope! 4, the Epochs: You only get to go through roughly 3 to 4 thousand years of human history on AoE, but on EE 500,000 years of human history not to mention 200 into the future. My personal favorite epoch is Atomic:WWII.
I'm a WWII memorablia collector. That is unusual for a seventeen year old.
5, the campaigns: There are twice as many campaigns on EE than AoE. They're more detailed too. I've had EE for about a year and I still haven't got through all the campaigns yet, but I only spend between one and two hours a day on EE. Sometimes more on the weekends. I have beaten the Pacific Campaign and a couple others. So far the Pacific Campaign is my favorite.
That is the biggest differences that I noticed playing AoE and EE. Now for those cheats.
EE cheats
food: Boston food sucks
gold: atm
iron: creatine
rock: rock&roll
wood: you said wood
100,000 resources: all your base are belong to us
all buildings: coffee train
all cheats: display cheats
full map: asus drivers
full map all resources: my name is methos
instant building and research: brainstorm
planes refueled in mid-air: friendly skies
remove objects from map: head shot
restore energy to character: i have the power
unknown effect: bam
upgrade to lvl 10 for all units: the quotable patella
view fish and animals: Colombus
win the game: somebody set up us the bomb