Which Laptop do you use?
Model, ghz/cores, graphiccard, ram, etc

I have the XMG A503:
-Intel Core i7 4700MQ
-GTX 765M
-4GB Ram+3GB from my SSD
-60GB SSD
-500GB HDD
-Windows 8.1 64bit

Not a Tech-head but that machine should be able to run it on at least medium settings.
My guess is that the engine is not optimized for mobile chip-sets or that your Laptop gets to hot, which they counter automatically with reducing performance.
Get a Cooling pad for it and or clean the air vents and make sure nothing blocks them while playing.

For Graphics, i did always disable AA and An-isotropic filtering because you hardly notice those anyway. Other than that its mostly playing around with the settings, because it differs so much between games. Some are ugly as hell with low res textures in other you hardly notice it, list goes on and on just try till you find a performance&graphical fidelity you can live with.

It doesn't get hot. Well I know my laptop is not the best, but I can play Battlefield 4 on ultra, so that's kinda weird... But maybe it's because of the engine?