I'm trying to get into this game, but I can barely get started before I have a million plots coming at me, and no time to prepare for ANYTHING... is there a way to slow down the clock in this game?

Try shutting down and restarting the game. Save your game often. It has bugs and sometimes the clock will go haywire.

I am having the exact same issue. I've logged a ticket with Support, though I am not sure what they may be able to do. I think it might have something to do with screen resolution, but I have not yet tested resizing to the smallest possible. Let me know if you find anything that can help fix this.

OK, I think I have this figured out -- since the game launches using DOSBox, you can slow down the processor speed by pressing CTRL-F11 a few times. This should work :)

If you accidentally make it TOO slow, you can speed it back up with CTRL-F12.

Well, just for the note, time is stopped as soon you are in any interaction.
It is fully enough to click on any county, task panel or options to pause the game, and then you can hoop from one dialog to other with no time passed.

But, I do believe time advances by a step every time you submit a dialog (starting a task for example, or exit visited territory) and if it then takes on in furious speed... hmm, think I can see how extremely fast clock can be a problem indeed.