Some systems have got problems displaying a small desktop resolution like 640x480.

- Go to your game's folder, usually \Tropico Reloaded\Tropico 2
- Find the file Tropico2.ini and open it with any text editor
- Set UIScreenSize=1 for an in-game resolution of 800x600
- Save and close the file
Check if it starts now.

Also make sure all older components of DirectX9 are installed:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

Alternatively try starting the game with \Tropico Reloaded\Tropico 2\Tropico 2 Safe Mode.bat
It'll use the configuration stored in Tropico2Safe.ini then, in which hardware graphics acceleration is turned off, in case you've turned it on and therefore can't start the game anymore.

If nothing of the above helps, right-click the game's shortcut => Properties => Compatibility tab => Set Run in 640x480 Screen Resolution

Darn. Everything you mentioned, I tried, and it still kept giving me the error. :( I appreciate the help though.

Hmm, try setting your desktop color depth from 32 to 16 bit before starting the game (right-click on a free spot of your desktop => Properties).

What's your desktop resolution? If it's very high, try lowering it.
What's your graphics card? If you go to its control panel does it offer you to set a desktop resolution of 640x480 with 16 bit color depth?

I have an ATI Radeon HD 5570. I can't change the resolution of my computer to any lower than 1280x720, and I don't see an option to change to 16 bit color depth.

I think were getting closer to the problem. If your your system indeed doesn't support the game's resolution, it isn't able to start. The question is why doesn't your system allow other standard resolutions? 1280x720 is a HDTV resolution. Maybe the monitor doesn't allow anything else. Do you use a TV as monitor? Is the monitor connected via HDMI cable? Do you force HDTV output somewhere in the graphics control panel?

You can also try setting an even higher resolution in the Tropico2.ini:
UIScreenSize=2 for an in-game resolution of 1024x768
UIScreenSize=3 for an in-game resolution of 1280x1024
Maybe one of those is supported by your system.

I'm not using a tv as my monitor. I believe it is connected via hdmi, ergo the 1920x1080p res, and I tried changing the config file to ui screen size 2 and then i tried 3, but neither worked, because it still tries to start it in 640x480 16 bit.

Do you have another monitor or VGA cable at hand, just to try if it's the HDMI connection?

I only have the one monitor.

I can't put my finger on it, but I think it has something to do with your system refusing to switch to a lower resolution and this seems to be connected to HDTV or HDMI. Check the Catalyst Control Center for any settings, that are forcing this HDTV resolution, probably in the Display section.

It could also be the HDMI cable that limits your possible resolutions. You could easily check this by using an analog VGA cable or maybe a DVI cable (but that's also digital and could cause similar problems)

I used the control center to force set my monitor to 16 bit colour and 480 res, but it still gave me the same error as before.

Okay, within the control panel, you were able to set your desktop to 640 x 480 in 16 bit color depth, right? So basically your system supports it.

Try some of the above mentioned things now:
- Right-click the game's shortcut => Properties => Compatibility tab:
- Set Run in 640x480 Screen Resolution
- Run as Admin
- Don't use a compatibility mode for now

If you haven't tried yet, definitely install the older libraries from DirectX9:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

Change the game's config back to 640x480:
- Edit \Tropico Reloaded\Tropico 2 \Tropico2.ini
- Set UIScreenSize=0 for an in-game resolution of 640x480
- Save and close the file

Update your graphics driver:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+7+-+64#amd-catalyst-packages

Check if it starts now.

If it still crashes, the problem might not be the resolution itself, but getting the resolution to run in DirectX in combination with your graphics driver. What we can try is circumventing DirectX for graphics handling. Your driver also supports another standard for graphics processing, that is OpenGlide. To do so, we use a rebuilt of DirectDraw that in reality is using OpenGL in the background, thus your graphics driver only receives OpenGL commands instead of DirectX.

Download wined3d.exe from here:
http://nongnu.mirrors.hostinginnederland.nl/wined3d/1.1.37/

Don't run the file, but open it with 7zip (a free powerful file compression software).
- Go inside the folder \$SYSDIR\
- Extract 3 files: libwine.dll, wined3d.dll, ddraw.dll
- Copy these files into \Tropico Reloaded\Tropico 2 \ so that they're in the same folder as Tropico2.exe
From now on, Tropico doesn't use your system's ddraw.dll but the Wine version (which uses OpenGlide)

Before running the game, change your Desktop color depth to 16 bit for better performance within Wine and remove all compatibility settings for now (you can try them if it doesn't run).