I encountered this problem also and have now created a much simpler solution.
there is a zip file attached to this post. it contains 2 x DLL's and 1 x EXE from the original Direct Draw implimentation under direct x 9.0c the file version has been slightly modified so that they will run under vista.
extract a copy of these 3 files to both your aoeII directory and your conquerers directory. the game will then work.
feel free to spread these to other forums etc. but give me some credit, i spent 9 hours working out how to do this.
this solution seems to work for a lot of older games under Vista. the latest runtimes for Direct X do not include Direct Draw support, this doesnt mean your video card doesnt support it, and can be rectified with this simple 2 step process.
Age2_X1.zip