Downgrade Gradle from 3.3 to 2.14.1

What you should do is to change the gradle build tools version to the one that matches your gradle version. According to here you can set the gradle to 2.14.1 by changing build tools to lower than 1.0.0.

buildscript {

    repositories {
        jcenter()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:1.0.0'// For gradle 2.2.1 - 2.3

        // NOTE: Do not place your application dependencies here; they belong
        // in the individual module build.gradle files
    }
}

Notice: if you keep checking the mentioned link you'll see Higher is better for gradle.

If you're using the gradle wrapper, then there'll be a folder in your project named "gradle" with a subfolder named "wrapper", inside that, there are 2 files:
- gradle-wrapper.jar
- gradle-wrapper.properties

Open "gradle-wrapper.properties" and change the place where it says "3.3" to "2.14.1". Then sync gradle, and it will automatically download 2.14.1.

If you're using the new 2.3 Android Studio, you HAVE to use gradle wrapper 3.3, as its the minimum supported gradle wrapper version. If so, then you'll have to download Android Studio 2.2, or fix whatever issue you have in your project that needs gradle wrapper version 2.14.1.

To get more information about whatever the issue is, try running this: ./gradlew clean assemble -stacktrace

That will clean your project, try and compile it, and if/when it fails, it will show you a stacktrace of the error.

For me, Android Studio > File > Invalidate Caches / Restart did the trick.