I have recieved an e-mail from kalypso. It gives a fix for steam users but none for boxes disks. Unfortunatly i have a boxed disk but here is what they said anyway........
step 1.open steam
step 2rightclick on tropic 3
step 3. choose properties
step 4.select local files
step 5.click on "verify integrity of game cache"

that should do it.

Hopefully this will be useful to somebody. If you have an other ideas for boxed versions of this game please help. thank you