This game is very CPU dependant, what CPU do you have?, a core2duo or an intel atom (unless maybe it’s a more powerful newer atom x7) is quite weak, and because I believe this game is dependant on single core performance, an older AMD chip will likely be slow too.
The game runs much better doing the things that you have described than it used to, my machine is from 2011 with an i7 but the game seems to run find on even an i5 or i3 from that period, and these actions do not take very long ever since the code was made to not redraw so much during actions such as these for me.
