I have made sure there is nothing running in the background. This is a new laptop. 2gig processor. I bought the game a couple of weeks ago, from walmart. Brought it home and ran the update prior to using the game the first time. Then updated again when this new update came out.
The reason i asked for your system specs is.. elemental requires at the very least a dual core. Now... multithreading prior to 1.1 was done in a rather mundane end of the turn way. So one wouldn't notice a lack of processing power besides length of time between hitting end turn and starting a new turn. However 1.1 brought in multithreading in which the AI is calculating during your turn. Not having the system requirements would be far more noticeable after recent updates.
Now just because a laptop is new.. doesn't mean it meets the minimum system requirements. Many new "value" laptops are still running single cores.