I can play this game, I had it pirated, now I brought it, but not it won't work. How do I fix this Critical Error. That is all I know of what it does, my mouse pretends to load, nothing changes, need to alt tab or ctrl alt del to get back to norm, but can't play.

Have you tried staring it up more than one time? (I guess you have, but I also encounter this occasionally, and for me, it's back to normal after one restart of the game.)
Failing that, you could try doing a clean uninstall and install it again.
What config+OS are you using?

(Also, could it happen that some files/registry entries/etc. stayed back from the illegal version?)

Hello there,

I'm having the exact same problem, and I never had any pirate version of the game. I've tried re-installing the game, re-starting the computer, opening it as an administrator, changing the screen resolution prior to opening... Nothing worked. It'd be great if someone had a solution!

Ditto Zebralin.

Everything I've tried has failed. Every time I try to launch the game, I get a critical error. When I click to end that, I'm taken to the Haemimont Games page and shown an ad for Tropico 4. Incredibly frustrating!

i think its crazy that tropico 3 and 4 do not support windows 8 what is wrong with gog they should tell us before we buy the game

I had the same issue under Windows 7. Whenever I started the game it hung and in the background a pop-up window appeared with the title "critical error".

A forum entry on the kalypso media forums resolved the issue for me. I only had to do step 1 and 2.

Link to forum entry.

I'm running Win8, and I'm getting a Direct X9 or later error. It locks up my machine, and makes me regret my small purchase.

Running the game in compatibility mode XP (Service Pack 3) seemed to have helped.

Update: I've not had an issue during about 20 hours of gameplay.

Fixed the problem for me! Thanks bud!

Tropico 3 Critical error

Bought this some time ago and only tried to play it now. I just get critical error about a DX9 compatible video card. Everything from GoG always worked, modern titles, old titles. This is the only one with a problem. :(

I have an integrated nVidia525M.

Latest drivers. Any hints ? :(


[UPDATE] - SOLVED
I read another thread on here and all I needed to do in my case was delete the Userconfig2.lua file from the appdata/roaming directory in C:\users

:)

Pity it still needs a serial though.