I'm playing a huge game. There are still 15 civs (an alliance I ha with the French didn't go too well for the Romans!) but wat is troubling is that each interval between turns takes like 4-6 minutes.

Can anyone suggest how to pick the spped up? options i can turn off?

I have a pretty good machine... Dell 5000e, PIII 750, 128m RAM,

Anyone else having similar problems?

Hit shift-control-M, it will remove all of the additions to the map, it makes it run a bit quicker.

Also, remember to turn off the animations and such. Hopefully there will be a patch that gives you the option of not seeing the movements at all.