BitterSteel is so cool I wish Belgium as a concept was real

I like to imagine how Bittersteel suddenly becomes the emperor of Japan in 1936 and tells his generals "OK your tanks divisions? They're shit, get rid of them. See those planes? They're also shit, get rid of them. Now, those submarines..."

This used to be called the Ultimate Japan Guide 2024

>sell weapons to italy >send volunteers to ethiopia sigma grindset

14:55 It is not dependent on the amount of airplanes you have deployed, but on the amount of airplanes you have. So just having airplanes in stockpile is enough, you don't have to deploy them for it to count towards the volunteer limit.

Great video, wonderful that you went a little bit deeper into naval and air - I realy like your longer more detailed videos

52:25 that luxembourg leader portrait 😂😂😂

It’s fun to rewatch this months later and re-absorb the information, thanks for the guides dude.

Hi Bitter! Brilliant video, although I have a quick guide to pronouncing the city of Dalian. Im from there, so a quick assortment of history. The city was taken by the Russians before being taken by the Japanese, and then being taken by the Communists in the Civil War. As a result, the city has sections with very Russian architecture, and is relatively diverse (sadly changing with time) with Mongolians, Manchus, Koreans, Russians, and normal Chinese. Another notable fact is that Grigory Seymonov was caught hiding there. Now, to the star of the comment: Pronunciation. Dalian can easily be sectioned into three different ways to say it easier. Da should be pronounced like the Russian yes (Da) but lighter, although that doesnt quite matter. Lian should be pronounced like Lee-An, but faster, to sound like one syllable. To summarize it: Dalian (Da Lee-An) As always, thank you for the great video bitter, and your guide will serve as my favorite Japan guide!.

Actually assigning the whole fleet strike force (29:10) doesn't work. They just stay in the ports until someone is in combat with an enemy fleet (which is impossible in this situation). Instead, its better to separate all of the subs in to smaller fleets with the size of 6-7 subs per fleet under the same commander. Assign them to raid convoys. This action would lure the escort fleets of China to attack, then hopefully the big fleets attacking the escort fleets, then the Chinese fleets joining in, resulting in a big victory. Also, I personally recommend buliding destroyers with only the cheapest engine since they are cheap and they can shield the battleships and carriers in a relatively low construction cost. For carriers, there is a penalty if you have too many carriers in the same fleet, so it's best to assign 4 of them to a fleet. If you want 5, then you need one wing of cas and one wing of fighters in order to make sure that your naval bombers take off sucessfully.

5:40 but the basic carrier naval has full efficiency, you will still have plenty and better planes Also 11:06 Italy bought from the nation that just send volunteer against them :))

Finally, the countury which I find the most glorious, yet the one I struggle the absolute most with! Thank you as always Bitt3rsteel for keeping us entertained and passively teaching us the game. Absolutely LOVE your content. Cheers from Colombia!

47:56 "I prefer heavy machine guns..." Well at least that was historically accurate af lmao. Many post-war interviews with IJN ace pilots seemed to conclude that they too preferred to the 13.2mm HMG compared to the many iterations of the IJN aerial 20mm cannons (the type 99 no. 1 and 2) - simply for the better velocity which meant pilots would have to lead their shots less and the shots won't just fall off after a certain distance. Also yes, the type 99 no. 2 did have significant increased velocity compared to the no. 1, but I guess the pilots were much more used to the trajectory and handling of the 13.2mm HMG.

Folowed this guide more closely in another save and got it! Thank you so much for this guide!

grats on 200k, you deserve it. have you ever considered ulti admiral dreadnaughts playthrough?

Let's go this is my favorite country to play as. I used your guide from a couple years ago to get China before 39 and get England and France by myself. Can't wait to study this video and update my strategies.

When the panay incident comes, you should pick the event where you get 100 pp. Yes the Us gets a wargoal against you, but they wont use that. I have done it always this way and the us never declared on me

Came to this video because I hit a wall against China outside of Changde. Turns out I didn’t know about the “escalate the war in China” decisions; I got them 70% capitulated with a 40% debuff the whole time

godDAMN this was some relaxing beats you got here!

I have honestly found thsi guide to be very difficult to follow along while playing. I do not have all of the mods, nontheless my research and whatnot was about the same pace until you just stopped mentioning your next picks. What do I pick after I get the 5th research slot? what do I pick after certain other research. I never got that information. When did you mention I was supposed to make two of my volunteers truck divs? How much XP was i supposed to have at what point in the game? I didn't have enough when I was supposed to modify the division templates for the marines and hohei shidan. I usually enjoy your content but this was a really bad experience if I'm honest. I don't struggle a lot in hoi4. Japan really was one of the only things I somehow could never pull off, while I usually (if not always) "win" on other nations - that is getting the game to the place I want it to be, like forming austria hungary or getting a peace conference as the bad Germany with the weird cross, so I was hoping to find advice here but its honestly been just so frustrating so far and Im only about halfway through. I had to start deciding on what research to choose myself and thats honestly not what I was hoping to do. I wanted to experiment later, once I could win in China AT ALL...

Man your Hoi videos are fantastic, really has made the game more enjoyable for me. Paradox should hire you to design tutorials that actually work!

43:58-47:30 Tokyo Dreaming by Particle House is one of my favorite songs! It's a shame they haven't come out with new songs since 2021.

small tip i found about the military industries. you can auto select your preferred upgrades to auto-upgrade without having to keep going back. just hold shift and left click in the order you want (though you have work from top to bottom, no cheats for auto-bottom) the only drawback is that it doesn't auto-update the design for any active uses (i.e. guns, ships, truck, etc that have an assigned industrial designer)

I still expected the Japan focus tree to be updated by now. But there still my favourite nation just for fun of land and naval battles

I feel proud knowing this week I basically finalized the same strategy in China. Finished in October 38. I found the drive from Nanking to Wuhan can be a little far without supply, but if you take the supply depot south of Shanxi and drive to their wartime capital, while using your marines to take those last ports, the line gets stretched too far and you can walk to the last cities you need. I also used armored recon with 4 armor on my 15 width infantry and grand battle plan and we attack bonused and armored our way to victory.

The music threw me off in this one, great video tho, keep up the good work

I was literally just searching for a Japan guide when you posted this, wtf. Stop listening in on me.

about those air volunteer thing, the amount you can send depends on how much airfield and the level of airfield a nation has, i noticed that when i played tno and built max level airfield in a state in madagascar before the civil war. It allowed me to send more air volunteers

Hey BitterSteel, i noitce halfway through the video some music starts playing, it's a little distracting when trying to use this as a guide. My recommendation, take it or leave it, is to just lower the volume a bit or have it fade out more when you speak, then go back up when your just moving things around etc. Overall great guide and it made my Japan THICK!

That's some nice, funky music you have in the backround, Bitt3rSteel (right after the China peace deal).

By far the best hoi4 KZfaqr it’s like an entertaining lesson

Yo man, you are one of my favourite hoi4 youtubers, i did not even ask for a Japan (I needed it) guide and here we are

These vids are an amazing experience

Fantastic! Japan is my favorite HOI nation by far, as I love how they have to manage every aspect of the game thoroughly in order to succeed. I'm usually happy if I can capitulate China by 1940, but I always forget about collab govt. I'll definitely have to try another playthrough as Japan with some of these tips.

I oppened the comments and found out that people be commenting on a 51 minute video 10 minutes after it came out now💀

I wash myself with a rag on a stick

Continuing my Bitt3rSteel tutorials - this guide is great! Worked great up to the part where I decided I didn't want to cap the Allies. So I tried to go pure historical. Here's some tips if you follow the historical focus path... - Build Anti-Sub Destroyers. A lot of them. Think you've got enough? Wrong. Triple it. I think 100 might do it though. - Take Singapore ASAP. Then don't lose it again. - Focus on the big Islands. I was losing garrison divisions so quickly just isolated on random pacific islands. That's the Americans strategy not the Japanese. - Don't go mental on the Army. I think you could expact on the tutorial a little bit. I think 120 Garrison infantry for your ports around Japan & S.China Sea. Maybe 4 x 24 good Inf and as many Marines as possible. Anyways, again, good guide Bitt3rSteel. Looking forward to the next one!

Speaking on the Ethiopian war, if you put your volunteers on aussa and the tile to the left of it it is impossible for italy to ever win. They may lose a couple front and bottom tiles per usual but after that they're dead in the water, the war escalates, then Italy gets rolled lol

I feel so bad about not being able to buy the mousepad now, as I am quite in a bad situation with the money. Hopefully you will have a future collab and I will be able to buy a similar one. Great video as always btw

I would like to point out, that Grand Battleplan gives you you an amazing sprit of the army, which reduces your fuel consumption by 5 %. Which for the very thirsty IJN can really add up. So you can save on fuel imports.

i've tried this 4 times now, the naval invasion never gets past the first 3 tiles of the peninsula. I'm even doing it with more/better divisions than you and i still lose.

You should do a guide on uniting China as Yunnan or Shanxi cause I’ve been trying to do it for a while and I haven’t been able to find any good guides

I wish you would make a list of the research you choose, I’m constantly trying to figure out what you picked.

Amazing guide

I'm still waiting for ya to do the 1945 mod but as Japan and later Italy. This is awesome though!

Not a bad Guide but still room for improvement, for example instead of using a full army of hohei shidan on the chinese border, you can grind 3 generals simultaneously, put 8 divisions (the crappy ones) on every tile with a seperate general. These Divisions are so weak that China will bang it´s head against them forever and if you notice that you might lose a spot have some divs in reserve in manchukuo. This tactic also leaves you with more hohei shidans for offensive pushes in the south after your naval landings. For the Navallanding why not go to Quingdao directly and cut off the tip of that dong?^^ Also it is worth to spend a bit more time with the navy, create a specific naval support group with just battleships, battlecruiser and heavy cruisers because these are the only ship types with the shorebombardement, saves you fuel which in turn saves civs and so on. still nice vid as always :D

I literally just played Japan for the first time yesterday and struggled with the Chinese and not a day later you dropped a guide for it.

In case you aren't aware, to improve the early game fuel efficiency, for the naval invasions just split off the BBs and CAs and just manually move them to the sea provinces adjacent to the invasion. That uses no fuel once they've arrived :) You can also save fuel early game by micro-ing the fleet training, and only train ships which need it, rather than the whole fleet. Unlike armies every ship in the fleet trains if on training.

I'm a fairly new player (70h) and I tried replicating your steps, and while I found your Guide insanely helpful, I was massively confused quite often because you switch some stuff around without mentioning it anywhere, gaining more XP and taking decisions that suddenly put me far behind. I really like your videos tho. All of them helped me a lot so far.

Another good first research is Sonar 1 for the refits

Thank you thank you know I can finally play a game of Hoi 4

A heavy hull actually has more light attack per production cost and total light attack, if you put secoundary batteries on it.

Taking as a given that "nothing matters vs AI", here are a few tidbits for anyone who wants to squeeze out some slightly more efficient play. Japans best air MIO is Mitsubishi, and it is locked inside the focus tree. I prefer to rush this first (New Naval Estimates -> Fighter Modernization -> Agility Focus) simply because if you want to have the MIO leveled up enough to give meaningful bonuses to the planes you produce for the war against the allies, then you have to get this MIO unlocked asap, period. Sasebo is easily the best naval MIO. It gives bonuses to visibility and speed, and those are key components to the naval hit chance equation. I prefer Ozawa as my main admiral. He has a bonus to speed from his background, can be given a role to boost speed further as chief of the navy, and can get Concealment Expert immediately to give another bonus to visibility. With a leveled up Sasebo MIO and Ozawa, you can have cruisers with a visibility of 9-10 (about that of a destroyer) moving at 45+ knots, even with armor stacked onto them. They will shred screens, and heavy batteries will struggle to ever hit them. Support equipment requires aluminum and Japan doesnt have any. Trucks need fuel and Japan doesnt have any. So design a line infantry unit (should compose the majority of your army) that requires no support equipment and no fuel. Take the starting 6/0 division, bump it up to 6/1, and add support ART and support AA. Thats it, and thats really all you need it to be. Sticking with GBP lets you get away with skipping out on engineers. You can add AT to it later if you want, but you wont need it vs China. If you dont want to sink research and industry into tanks early on, then using mobile infantry as seen here works, but I prefer to design attack infantry using marines. They will benefit from infantry and special forces bonuses, and you can unlock the marine doctrines really quickly using naval xp. Later on you can convert to mountaineers if you find the spare army xp to unlock those doctrines as well.

34:35 - It's pretty silly how with this older Focus Tree Japan has to choose between the Zero and the Yamato. Two historical things you can't have both of via the Tree because the older trees were more around specializing your strategy for a historical war rather than larping.

40:15 "Just to mop up the little mess we left in Nanqing" What have you done in Nanqing with the Japanese Bitter Steel? 🤨

good guide, but I will add one thing. At the beginning, in China you can put harsh quotas, which will give you 1 military factory, which, in my opinion, is quite neat for Japan.

you know ive been watching your videos for a while and your accent is like cool and i was wondering where are u from?

Love your content 😊😊😊❤❤

I like this, though I’d also like to see a “sunrise invasion” version!

Hi, after starting the invasion at 32:00 ... how do you exactly control army? In my own game, I do net get enough supply... chinese troops reinforce and i am not even able to conquer Qingdao... is there another video on your channel with more detailed explanation?

Thank you for actually giving the territory to Mengkukuo, it just feels right 😂

planning bonuses still apply when you move stuff manually

damn it, i thought the Next video was My playthrough

Manly men who dresses as french maid at home gang 👇

Love you boo ❤ thanks for the upload pookie

THANK YOU

type-99 - 0 strategy - 0 end goal - tenno hikkah banzai! - tora tora tora tora!!! - based on Mauser design - glorified short spear - If you press your ear up to the chamber and listen really closely, you can hear *banzaiiiiii*

Honestly I'll probably never get air wing sizes (I just use whatever the default is, it works fine, so eh?)

Loving the music in there. Nice vid.

Good one Bitler

26:27 can we point out isn't that Argentina of all nations that have sent volunteers to Ethiopia

Who else thinks the original title of "HoI4 Guide: The Ultimate Japan in 2024" was wayyy better?

I understand how to build economy, focuses, and keeping equipment up to date...but anything to do with war and troop movement i have no idea.

What I like to do with Japan at the beginning is deleting all the bad (red arrow down) units, and horses, since they're going to be weak either way and won't be able to do much. Then, I take the divisions that are left, and edit the infantry to add 2 artillery and less infantry. In turn, it gives me less divisions that are so much stronger, and can fastly and easily push through the frontlines, eat less supply, and focus on artillery instead of guns.

So. Air volunteer maximum is based on how many planes you have in total. Not airfields or deployed airwings as you said. So the reason you can send 1 and not 2 is that you sold your airplanes early. Sell them after the Spanish war instead.

Before this I could barley entering into China and win let alone stand up to the allies so this is really helpful

Can you do a guide for greece to restore byzantium very early on? Its been a long time since you did one.

you should try Armor piercing CAS on a carrier, I didn't believe but it appears someone at PDX said "we need to stop making Carrier CAS useless"

The new music actually goes hard

Thanks

Grand battle plan is actually really good for micro, but you have to use a garrison exploit that turns the game into hoi3

10:56 Am I the only one that noticed the Warhammer boxes?

Looks like guides are back on the menu boys

very cool video

Heyy BitterSteel, new dev diaries just dropped, will you review them?

Waiting on at disaster save... Sure will be interesting

"We could boost those numbers by deploying a few more air wings." - BitterSteel

Whats the nice eastern music you got going at the first few minute?

we need a machu/qing update, bc of some wierd new mechanics and bc i like to see ppl play it (:

I think you actually need some fighter(and cas) if you have 5+ carriers. There is a penalty on number of air wings, which is 20% per carrier above 4. So for 6 carriers outfit 4 carriers with VT, 1 with VT and VF, 1 with VT, VF and VB you get 40% penalty on 9 wings which is 5 wings. You only have 6*0.6=3 wings available otherwise.

39:37 BITERSTEEL WHAT THE HELL BOY 😳🫢

An hour long bittersteel video, hot dog we hit the lotto boys

Honestly, as much as I love to buy DLC for HoI 4, I have tried to follow every guide that has interested me that BitterSteel puts on YT. However, it seems like all my ironman games, I just get shot in the foot. Following this guide, I can get the first port that you need to capture, but my follow on attacks to secure the port fail, and then its like the Chinese can just body block me, no matter that they are near 1M losses just from attacking around the main front near Bejing.

I don’t understand how this guy pronounces every city, generals name, and odd country names absolutely perfectly. 😢

OMG! It's Emperor BitterKōtetsu!

With this I finally got japain's achievements

Brazil guide after trial of allegiance pls

Maybe you could make a new guide for the Rising Sun achievement, would deffintely help!

Leading man right here!

When Bittersteel plays it looks so easy when I play I get the AI ​​in my face