I remember playing this many years ago, but we always had problems with DESYNC, is it still present or the Gold version at GOG has it fixed ? Anyone tried it ?

Hello,

The issue is present across all versions.

Settlers 3 was palyable. There's not that often like in Settlers 4. In S4 there is said, that you have to save circa every 10 minutes to prevent from desyncing. Also there are people who play it with gameranger. Not sure if it's works with that programm.