This game's stuttering issues under newer Microsoft OS's (I am running Windows 8.1) seem to stem from buggy (nonexistent?) DirectDraw acceleration. There has been some mention of setting CPU affinity to single core and changing process priority in other threads, but these solutions did not work for me.

A common solution to DirectDraw problems--DDHack--didn't work for me but WineD3D did. This emulates DirectDraw (and Direct3D) on top of OpenGL which seems to successfully resolve most graphical issues with CTP2, as the cost of some increased startup time (can be several seconds longer to show the window).

Download version 1.1.38 (last version to support DirectDraw emulation) wined3d.exe. (Don't bother with the .iso file, it just contains the .exe)

DO NOT RUN THE .EXE, instead you will need to open it with 7-zip. Inside the folder you extracted to, open the folders $WINDIR\SysWOW64.

Copy ddraw.dll, libwine.dll, wind3d.dll to C:\GOG Games\Call To Power 2\ctp2_program\ctp.

A final note, this clearly benefits the retail version of CTP2 here on GoG but does not seem to help the Apolyton Edition achieve a smooth framerate. Instead it seemed to solve the odd cursor acceleration/deceleration behavior--a step in the right direction but not a complete solution as of yet.

Thank You :)

Hmm. As of October 2020 on Windows 10 this doesn't seem to be working for me. I have the default 1024x768 resolution set but it seems to be auto-scaling to 1080p, or at least a 16:9 aspect ratio without much distortion (Though I am unfamiliar with the game) and maybe that's why the cursor is still laggy? I'll try messing with the resolution and scaling as well as my mouse dpi and polling rate and see if it improves.


EDIT: No nothing really seems to help much. Tried adjusting the resolution, mouse sensitivity on my mouse and in game and its still very unresponsive and jumps around all over the place.