So, I had a crashing/lagging issue even after wading through all the dll's, and fixes I could find. Found the solution on a YouTube comment of all places. User KoD83 pointed me to a software called dgVoodoo. Apparently used to emulate old Gpus? It's a WIP program, so there's that.
tl;dr is get the "dgVoodoo WIP60_1" from their download section, get the d3d9 from MS/x86 folder. x86 worked for me for some reason and not the x64. Rename it to d3d9_alt to preserve the sub mod functionality and move it to where the exe's are. With that you should be golden. Small caveat though, there's an obnoxious watermark on the bottom right. For that you need to watch a video on how to configure dgVoodoo. It's a pretty simple program, with it you can even get force AG3 to 1920x1080.