Unofficial patch for the Good Old Games version of the game, but may also work for other English Poseidon 2.1 versions: it has been confirmed to work for the Steam version as well.
This patch fixes the following issues:
Gods appearing/acting slowly
Urchin collectors not gathering urchins at a regular pace
Some other animations not advancing correctly
This does NOT fix the insanely fast animations on trading piers, hippodrome spectators and other buildings.
How to install
Browse to your Zeus installation folder, this is usually at C:\GOG Games\Zeus and Poseidon
Make a backup of the Zeus.exe file in that folder (not required but advisable)
Extract the downloaded zip file, copy Zeus.exe over the one in the installation folder