Hoi4 Guide: The Ultimate Germany - No Step Back 

This could be the start of a new "ultimate" series where you showcase the meta for major nations or critical minors.

I love how Bitter leaves a little time bar underneath the ad time. i know its in his best interest that you do watch the ads but giving us an easy way to skip them is doing truly doing us a service! keep it up my man!

One tip, when making armor templates, there"s a button for Auto Upgrading. This means as you research new tech, the old parts get replaced without any XP cost. Otherwise, you'd have to manually switch them and pay Army XP

Your guide not only taught me how to play Germany but it also taught me so much about the game that I didn't know already thank you so much

400 hours of hoi and i still can’t break france, really needed this guide and thanks man

In terms of general traits, I find getting Logistic Wizard the most important for Invading the Soviet Union later on.

i went from pravus gaming, to isorrowproductions, to taureor, to feedbackgaming, to mountain general, then, to you. and then i stayed here and will continue to do so. i think it's because you know more about the game mechanics than the others while still being able to make the video entertaining. you brought back the excitement i felt when i first watched taureor's world conquest with butan and mongol empire.

i love really much your almost perfect pronounciation of german words. Its not often you see youtubers being so good at this.

Subtitle time 1:17 Hello there "Peter Steele" 1:28 "the gym" German Reich 3:10 "taking nutrition" 3:34 "rice autobahn" 4:00 "two-toed anti-air" 11:51 "political advisor yamashacht" 12:16 "hermann gerding verka caddy f wagon" 18:51 "operation c line" 25:02 "ice autobahn" 25:45 "industrial concern crop" 26:32 "von witzler ben fitzleman" Who? 29:28 "from horshitz" Bruh, really? 30:35 "ancillus" Anschluss 31:00 "angelus" Anschluss 31:11 "ancillars" Anschluss 32:20 "ances" Anschluss 33:10 "irv and rommel" 33:39 "angelus" 🤦 37:37 - 37:40 "ervin hormul" - "master schmidt" 39:50 "more competent in disguise" 41:19 "ghost bombshaft" 44:06 "elvin hommel" 45:48 "toad anti-air" 46:57 "we'll be better off with mortal" Walter Model 49:01 "blizz creek" 49:39 "karl dynas" 50:37 "declare war on the polls" 55:01 - 55:04 "molotov ribbon drop back" - "ghost bomb" 55:11 "operation vessel" 55:51 "western ubuntu" Operation Weserübung 56:24 "supply shoes" 58:36 - 58:38 "operation investor ubuntu" - "western ubuntu" 59:14 "operation vessel uben" 59:50 "molotov ribbon drop pack" 1:02:58 "rice komasarias" 1:04:39 "molotov ribbon truck pact" 1:04:53 "anti-commander pact" 1:05:21 "i don't want to walk past the euros" 1:07:17 "rex commissars" 1:07:54 "blacks commissariats" 1:08:44 "elev yellow eva" 1:09:24 "german iraq is unstoppable" 1:11:24 "c-line" It's done, now if I missed anything just comment below.

24:52 Centralized Control is definitely the best one. 10% bonus to air mission efficiency basically means 10% bonus to everything your planes do.

1:00:23 one good route i found out while playing germany when trying to invade UK is to use paratroopers and drop them in yorkshire area, I have found that british usually don't put air supieriority/interception on their mainland unless you put air wings over them, for example if you put your planes to air supieriority over english channel or to naval strike etc, they will put their planes at most over lower england, so if you manage to paratroop near yorkshire region, which usually won't be covered by RAF, you can go bonkers on them with units, flooding them like a swarm of bees

Germany or: How to use Main Character Syndrome to your advantage.

My man says it's going to be an easy to follow guide then proceeds to shuffle techs like a card trick. Well played...

You can use 5 xp from Rhineland to make a single infantry battalion division and spam as many as you have equipment for. It allows you to send 6-7 divisions to Spain depending on how many you get out. Later you can convert some of them to 10 widths to defend ports, coast etc. Also helps to get manpower in the field quickly for Anschluss.

Great Guide! Also, have you ever tried the Fifth Portuguese Empire path for Fascist Portugal? I never heard of anyone doing that and it kinda looks like a big challenge, would love to see it

I thought I knew every strategy with Germany. But then I saw what collaboration can do and it was unexpected

As a seasoned EU4 player but complete Hoi4 noob, thanks so much for these explanations without diving into min-maxing that sets my brain on fire. Love the style of the guide.

Bittersteel on the topic of a British landing at 52:50 “If the British land it’s nbd” is basically echoing Bismarck on his plan if the British ever invaded “I shall have them arrested.”

Thank you Steel for this guide after learning everything of what to do I have mange to now have 90% of the world under my control I hope to see more guides like these soon

Challenge (another Germany challenge) win the war using historical division templates only, regardless of actual effectiveness. Some research may be required to find them out. Use whatever tech levels you want, but if a standard division results in some random unoptimized division width, make it work. If the division ends up being something that is crap in the game, I believe in you :) Must be fascist, but if you decide to attack countries out of order feel free. Bonus points for taking over Germany’s historical European conquest goals before the US gets involved. Extra bonus points for not doing historical.

Thank you for this guide, I have very little time in this game. This was my first campaign and was very fun and very stressful at points, but I'm going to succeed because of the things in this guide. So again thank you

"I want more attack rather than more speed. We have plenty of speed." Who are you, and what have you done to Bitter?

So I see my build is spreading. You could have gone for welded armour instead it finishes in time and probably would have been better since you are going to get it anyways but.

38:15 - MountainGeneral: "And I took that personally"

Just a note about the sponsor for this video: Salad is, as we could expect in that day and age, using the specs of your computer to mine blockchain. If like me you're very much unfriendly to blockchain technology, take that in before hopping in a certainly interesting offer to get rewards for, basically, a bit of electricity. Sad that the system isn't about a more "normal" computing cloud system, which I would happily help, and actually already do for charity with BOINC and World Community Grid. It doesn't get me anything but it helps charity and public research, and I'm pretty sure the same kind of things with rewards from paying companies wanting R&D computing power could be a thing. Sad that Salad is about blockchain bs instead.

Great vid as always Bitt3r Just one thing for the total mob bit at 58:56... if you push all your factories to trade for resources they don't count against the UKs factories. So you can do it for a couple of days get total mob and then revert back to your normal industry afterwards 🙂 Hope this was helpful

Great guide that is still up to date, really helps you to grasp certain concepts

Could have gone for Naval efford as second Focus instead of missing out on those 30 days

After watching through this whole guide there are only a couple things I think could be improved. First thing is when it comes to prioritizing guns for the volunteers in China and Spain, you can click on the button with the gear on it in the 'Theatres' tab (the area that says German Theatre 1, Spanish Volunteers, and Chinese Volunteers), and you can change the priorities from there. It's great when you have the same division template in multiple places and want one of them to have higher priority. The other issue that I saw was regarding the MEFO Bills. Since you'll be ending the war with the allies before going into the USSR, it's a good idea to cancel the MEFO bills before declaring war on Poland. If you don't, you get hit with a massive 20% consumer goods for 180 days.

Would love an updated version of this for By Blood Alone and now Arms Against Tyranny

Holy this is a long one! Nice job bittersteel!

One thing that I do is to send my Tactical Bombers/CAS to Nat.Spain and Nat.China to farm air EXP and focus purely on CAS, the wars in Spain and China are such big air exp grinders its crazy. Make sure you select Close Air Support and Logistical Strikes. What you do with the exp is pick the army spirit that reduces the cost of upgrading your CAS by 75% then upgrade whatever CAS you will make to max, all 5 in all 4 categories, it will only cost 100-something. I find that getting CAS 2 right away(research at the beginning) and getting CAS3 with the help of the national focus to be the most optimal play, then you will have max upgraded CAS really early. The two wars give you enough EXP to upgrade all of your CAS(1-3) and get some doctrines as well. I find that to be better than splitting mils between fighters and CAS personally, as max upgraded CAS can go toe to toe with AI fighters and they shred the AI divisions so even the crappiest infantry will be godly in the field. I personally drag the Spain and China wars out as much as possible to upgrade my CAS to the absolute maximum. Not backseating, I am just providing my strat to the people who read this comment section. I just want to help. Another thing to note is how crucial it is to get a Soviet Spy early, it is sooo important for barbarossa to do the collab governments. The axis spy master thingie and the illusive gentleman advisor should get you min 3 spies, I prefer using the soviet spy to build a network in vladivostok and switch him to quiet operation once they are at 80-90% and use my other two spies to spam collab government until the maximum, it just makes the soviet war far less of a hassle. I also have not watched the whole video yet, so I am not sure if he does or speak about any of these things yet, but it shouldn't matter as I am not here with the intention to backseat him, I just want to help the other people here in the comments section.

Thanks for making videos like this, most of us are experienced players and assume "haha germany ez" but this kind of video is really important if we want to keep HOI4 alive, this is a really hard game to get into, I've seen friends new to HOI struggle a lot to defeat "easy enemies" and you making videos for the less experienced players really helps keep the game growing.

Such an awesome guide! Thanks alot for making it! The economic part is allways the hardest part for me.

Again, thanks for the guide here. The start up for the nation really helps me. Was able to try different methods during the guide. For example, I did Naval Reararmant after Rhineland. (since it was 35 days for that and 34 days for the naval smokescreens tech) Didn't downsize any of my fleet production, and started mass producing subs. Had like 40 raider subs. (and 10 mine layer subs) at the time I started the war in Poland. Started using Tactical Planes to bombard UK ports while the Close Air and Naval Bombers focused on the seas. Which super helped to keep their fleets in port so they lost naval power to easily invade. :) Again, the guide really helps to get me to understand the game a bit more and the different ways to go about it.

Very clear, well explained, good fun! Well done and thanks. Here's a thought for future videos. Let's say you could keep a save (or some kind of backup if ironman?) at a critical moment. Using this video as an example, it might be the invasion of Benelux, France, or of the UK. Then, after running the initial scenario, you revert to that save and switch tag to one of the "doomed" nations, say the UK, and see if you can rescue it against the AI's execution of the killer battleplan you set up against it. Just a suggestion - it just might be both entertaining and interesting. It'd also be fun, and illuminating, listening to you deconstruct whatever lunatic strategy the AI had adopted before you took over. Cheers!

i used this strategy all the way up to sea lion (i went in from Dieppe into southern england) the war was over by 1941, and it was my first ever game where i won without cheats. EDIT: it turns out i waited too long for the soviets and i got my teeth kicked in. so 1 change i'd make for this guide is that instead of steamrolling france, use your armies to steamroll the soviets. use the time to further boost your industry with your focuses and also unlock some other techs. meanwhile, use the fact that the maginot line is the only real entrance for the french and hold it with 1 army while you take out the russians before they can build up. then, you can turn around and just totally conquer the french and english without any real trouble. the only issue with this plan is that the US may join the allies, however it shouldn't be too much of an issue by then. I'd also make the medium tanks WAY earlier than what this guide suggests so that you can upgrade them later on while still having access to the medium tank divisions. lastly, add a medium tank onto your infantry to give your infantry some armor and make space marines

For the 35 army xp officer corps trait I usually go for the motorization drive. That makes it much quicker/easier/cheaper to make your tank divisions or motorized divisions if you want to use them. I usually have different divisions for light and medium tanks though rather than the one div with both mixed in. YMMV Also, that France collab meme to annex vichy france and the navy all for free was god tier. Definitely going to have to give that one a go.

Your videos are most satisfying, especially those encirclements

Nice to see a long Germany guide :)

One important thing I noticed. It's better to already have finished the tech 1934 Medium tank chassis BEFORE doing the Treaty with Russia focus. IF you don't have already the 1934 Medium finished when the 'Treaty with Russia' focus finishes, then you wont get your free of charge tank designs for PZIII and Panzer IV. The tooltip of the focus is a bit bugged, but you really DO need to have the 1934 Medium tank finished before that focus has finished.

great vids but plz maybe dont cut so abruptly and show a little bit more (eg I was trying to see what your first production queue was halfway thru the vid but everytime it cut of it was already passed your first queue slot) it is kind of hard to tell when to pause as i follow along other than that it really is the best guide and u did rlly good and it has rlly helped me

Me watching this just after blood alone thinking this was awesome and I should have seen it much much earlier. I'd love to see you're doing one like this in blood alone too. Keep up the good work 🙂

This is a very powerful guide. Nearly fool proof, awesome stuff

Even though this guide is immensely helpful, especially for newer players like me, because you made a calculating error I shall never watch you ever again, and when I play Germany I will henceforth begin by justifying against Italy.

Instead of making the troops elite for equipment priority, if they're in a different theatre of war u can select the priority of the supplies to said theatre at the settings icon "cog" 16:52

Love your work! Keep it up :)

bro this game is so complicated!! but never the less I'm determind to get better thanks for the guide!

Thanks to your videos, over time, I've been able to play Germany very "competently", but you just took it to another level! Speaking of which, you mentioned "getting cores", were you talking about the Alsace-Lorraine focus or is there something else that can be done with the Reichskommissariats?

This is a very good guide. If I were going to design a guide for newer players I would simplify it a bit more by not delaying focuses, juggling tech or fast deploying units, and I wouldn't bother with grinding as much. I think those are best for an advanced minmax guide

Didn't have all the dlc but I still followed this guide with some minor deviations and ended up pulling off my first successful sea lion operation, thanks bitt3rsteel!

Excellent general and specific guide. I found at least six new tips and even more techniques. Of course, several techniques are obsoletish with the advent of BBA, but most are adaptable to the new DLC. Thank you. I hope you redo these 'ultimates' for the majors at least every other DLC. Thank you.

Its hard until u realise its really simple. U just need to know how the game works, how to create airwings, templates, what focuses and research to go for first. Also realising to not mix different divisions like tanks and inf in 1 army took me some time. Then I started trying weaker countries and at this point u already know how the game works and what u can do in order to not get crushed

Please make this a series were you show how to start playing each major

"So, 4 times 24, what is that? 92?" 12:52 oh god it hurts so badly 25 * 4 is 100 then we take away 4, since 24 is one less than 25 and we have four of them 96 is such a round, geeky number, it's halfway between 2^6 and 2^7, it's part of 4096 which is the circumference of a square with side length 1024 which should have given the game away instantly... i'm looking forward so hard to the future when all of your armies have 23 units in them and you're like "oops", it will be so entertaining :D

This is a great guide. I was off by a few days here and there. Funnily, in my game the UK capitulated but the Allies kept on fighting.

This is amazing, thank you for your guide, I know this is kinda a bit but is it possible for you to do a micro managing/combat guide? Since while playing as other countries I do well industrially but I can’t figure out how to break the front lines due to my lack of understanding of the combat system

4:33 I have almost 1200 hours in HOI4 and I never knew about that strat. Ima try that out when I launch my next game

nice guide as always

Didn’t think a Hoi4 guide would be this long

Could you please do Huge-oslavia again for no step back please?

I couldn't recruit cavalry in time for lack of equipment, i did put high priority in the division. Any clues?

Wait so I can be sponsored by my favorite foods? Tacos, come sponsor me

Worth every minute! 🙌

Somewhere 1000+ hours on hoi4, still would love a japan guide, probably the worst nation i am at

Hitler should have watched this video before attacking some countries

I really enjoy your videos man, keep up the good work Mr. steel lol

thank you for what you call a "new guide" for germany. i hope you can do it to some countries like japan or italy

So he was sponsored by a crypto miner? Don't know how I feel about that

The Waffle House Has Found Its New Host.

This is a better guide than your 2023 one because in the 2023 one you skipped alot of step that I couldn't follow

You’re the one who taught me how to play H014, I’ve been trying for a long time,thank you!

Very good guide, downloaded as reference.

If you use the 5 army xp from rhineland to create a 2-width inf template, and force deploy (97? I think) of them before the SCW, you can send 7 volunteers. then you just convert them all to regular infantry and you have all the fielded manpower requirements and 5x full armies of infantry ready to go by the time '39 rolls around.

man i wish you started streaming on twitch man , it would be so much better with vods rather than videos with multiple cuts

Brilliant - entertaining and educational. What more could you want?

i just want you to know i love you, i actually capitulated france for the first time on 1936 on ironman with your help tysm

I love how you pronounce the german words. Good guide!

I don't have thsi game but i still think it's entertaining as like background stuff, nice vid

You can also set theaters to have priority for equipment (the little circle next to the theater name)

Yay, I’ve been waiting for this because I keep getting stuck by the mountain range in Russia.

May you do Italy next please

"I'm not going to cheese this with immediate wars!" Immediately queues up 30 cavalry divisions.

Thank you i have benn triyng to do that but this one finally works

For anyone playing this with By Blood Alone, just take the British and French navy at the Peace Conference

This was an awesome guide. I didn't manage to get the medium tank production so stayed with lights. I got to upping production a bit late I guess. Anyway, German Raj, Malaya, and east indies and Egypt by 1940. France attacked through the maginot while I was invading Poland. Anyway, I have no lack of resources and all ready for Barbarossa! USA is probably still building factories. Thanks for the guide!

You can get quite a bit of Army experience early on a couple of different (alternative) ways. One is to put a Chief of the Army in early on and train cheap units like Cavalry. Another is to produce a lot of infantry equipment and send it as lend lease to BOTH sides of the Spanish civil war. If you manage this carefully, you can keep the war going for several years while rapidly getting XP from the equipment in use. It's difficult to do both of these at the same time though. It is also possible to send only air volunteers to Spain for air experience.

I have watched this video every day this week, starting over every day trying to time things as you do but my jedi powers aren't as strong

Perfect timing - Just finished a world conquest Germany run after a few failed attempts and THEN this guide comes out... :(

Awesome guide, I roughly followed it and got 200 factories by 1939 as a beginner.

There's that one airforce spirit that allows you to upgrade your planes more cheaply

I'll definitely try this out when I play with the Expert AI mod!

I am playing on Ironman historical, and played relatively similarly, except with few minor changes, as in not doing everything in exactly the same order. When I declared war on Poland, which was in early 1939, nearly EVERYONE joined. The list of nations who joined the Allies at that moment is HUGE: UK + puppets France Netherlands Belgium Denmark Sweden?! Norway Switzerland?! Greece USA?! Mexico Poland (of course) Romania?! Like, half of these nations shouldn't be there this early, or shouldn't be there at all. But I managed to somehow still win in Europe, athough I was forced to take the Soviet alliance path after everyone declared. Knocking out France was the thing that helped me, now I'm just having 92 divisions guarding every single coast I have on the mainland (not in Scandinavia). And all I have to do now is kick the suckers out of Greece and Yugoslavia, and I basically focus all my efforts on crossing the sea, capitulating the UK and then, finally, the Americans.

"Always set up slovakia as a puppet state, this is a no brainer." Me every time I go smittler: Hungry must have their rightful clay!

Very nice tutorial/playthrough. Will return to this often :) One question: after creating German France with the collaboration gov, how will the Atlantikwall focus behave? Will German France get the coastal forts built?

What I always do for the early snowball is too get gobbels for the war support and take Rhineland as first focus this allows me to get war economy within the first 100 days of the game

Instead of cavalry, train 120 2 width divisions. They are also ready until the civil war and you can send 7 divisions as volunteers.

yeah i stalled in france and got a million casualties following this guide exactly

What everyone else patiently waiting through the advert hears: But first let me introduce you to our sponsor... What I hear skipping through it five seconds at a time: *But first let me introduce you to our Spawn, Alan!* Excellent!

You’re a genius.