Yeah, it's really annoying Chrisinemh and not really practical for a real time game. What I do is Fast Forward at the start until my village is established.

I find putting my computer clock forward a hour at a time helps.
Of course, be careful as this may interfere with your anti virus program and other programs on your computer.
(More details in this post: http://www.ldwforums.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=54083&page=1#Post54083)

I don't find this makes it harder at all by the way, it's more inconvenient and annoying than hard. I would have appreciated more harder puzzles than this annoying lag.