I still have the slow as a snail gods bug and some of my buildings animations don't work properly. It makes the game unplayable to me in some cases.. Anything new on this issue? Or did this kinda just fade out? I know im not the only one with these issues and would like a patch if possible.

Did you try any of the workarounds in this thread? A patch would be nice, but I don't know that anyone ever identified a root cause much less a fix.

I'm having these issues as well. Hopefully someone can address them.

I know a lot of people say the problem is sound related, but I had some results installing the widescreen mod. Gods seem somewhat quicker and urchin quays more functional. I do however have to click the 1024x768 reso button again every game for the effect. Still difficult on the Hercules Labors adventure as your main source of food is urchins.

EDIT: BTW, I suggest a backup of your own Zeus exe and data folder and going with the lowest resolution you can as it minimizes the world map distortion. Once you've copied the right folder to your Zeus directory, you have to start the game and in options select the 1024x768 reso, this will kick it to the one you installed with the mod. Gog wont let me add the link...

EDIT 2: So a little more working with this and I have found that using the DirectMusic fix detailed in the other thread is also effective. This may be a combination of both fixes as it still seems to run better if I reset the resolution each game. Gods and urchin quays now seem pretty much normal in terms of speed. Having done some research I found out that after XP, Microsoft Vista/7/8 dropped complete support for DirectMusic and began only emulation support. This may be why people experience trouble with these OSes.

Other info: Also running in compatibility mode XP SP3 w/ disable visual themes, disable desktop composition and run as administrator.

Relevant posts from the linked thread:
DirectMusic fix
Recording devices
PLAYBACK devices and note the no other programs using audio in the background (Chrome).
BES solution

Recording devices - doesn't do a damned thing
Playback devices - same as recording
BES - useless
DirectMusic - Can't figure out how to work this as the instruction were WRITTEN FOR A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME!!!

I would appreciate someone posting SIMPLE instructions on how to do that for Zeus
Edit - well manged to get BES to work after I disabled visual themes for zeus. go figure

Just wanted to share a fix found in another forum, and that for me is working perfectly:
1. Download and install the program CheatEngine (http://www.cheatengine.org/)
2. Launch Acropolis, then ALT+TAB out of it
3. Launch Cheat Engine
4. Open Acropolis' process in Cheat Engine
5. Enable SpeedHack (it's a toggle box on the right)
6. Set the speed to either 1.0 or 2.0 (try both and see which works best for you - for me it's 1.0)
7. Click Apply
8. Leave Cheat Engine running and go back to Acropolis
9. Enjoy

With this setup, all animations seem to be working perfectly fine now... buildings and Gods are now OK.
Well, except for the Trading Post worker, who looks on meth, but in my opinion it's acceptable.

The other thread mentioned above seems bugged to me, because accessing any further than page 2 results in the message ""Entered search terms did not match any post contents in this topic... Back to topic". >.>

Edit: But I can confirm that the Use of the "Speed Hack"-function of Cheat Engine solves the issue. Finally an easy-to-use fix. Thanks for the idea.

Of course the "100% speed" option in the game doesn't result in superspeed anymore when this hack is applied. ^^

If you don't mind playing with no sound, then it should be mentioned that deleting (or renaming) the folder [Zeus' installation path]\Audio\ seems to be too another fix for this issue.

god bless @255ff

CheatEngine speed hack at x4.0 plus game speed at 40% is what finally worked for me. At x1.0 and x2.0 gods and urchins bays just occasionally used to freeze.
Now buildings animation looks a little bit too fast, but gods and urchins functions well.

Hey there,
unfortunately it did not work for me. My problem is that the urchin collectors never return from the sea. So I tried out both settings 1.0 and 2.0 but nothing helped.

Does anyone have any piece of advice for me?
Thanks :)

Sure: some good soul actually managed to patch it out of the game.
https://zeus.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=967
(widescreen version: https://zeus.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=974 )

Is that safe to download?