Hoi4 Guide: The Ultimate Japan in 2024 

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..."

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

52:25 that luxembourg leader portrait 😂😂😂

This used to be called the Ultimate Japan Guide 2024

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.

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!.

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

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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)

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.

godDAMN this was some relaxing beats you got here!

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.

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!

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

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

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

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!

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

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.

By far the best hoi4 RU-vidr it’s like an entertaining lesson

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

These vids are an amazing experience

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.

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.

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 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

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

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.

Amazing guide

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

I wash myself with a rag on a stick

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

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.

Thanks

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

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

Good one Bitler

Love your content 😊😊😊❤❤

44:19Thick Mengkukuo for the Win

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.

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

Love you boo ❤ thanks for the upload pookie

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.

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

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"

planning bonuses still apply when you move stuff manually

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

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

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

I prefer light cruisers, with 4 or 5 light batteries and armour 3 to destroy enemy screens (with radar and fire-control refitted when unlocked). Light batteries pack more light attacks per slot and are more cost-effective to build (Higher light attack per production cost). More importantly, light cruisers, take light damage, and at game start, no navy has more than 7 light-piercing, and can't pierce amour 3 (1936 amour tech). So these "light" cruisers take significantly reduced damage. Though they still need to be surrounded by cheap destroyers to distract torpedoes, and a few heavy ships to soak up heavy damage. I am not certain if this is the best idea, maybe adding 4 or 5 light batteries is overkill (depends if they can target multiple ships at the same turn, I don't know for sure), and I don't know what ratio of destroyers to light cruisers to capitals is best (I went with equal production cost investment in Destroyers, Battleships and Light Cruisers in my tests). At least, in my tests this was very effective at removing Royal Navy destroyers. but If anybody disagrees, please let me know

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.

very cool video

By the time you have 4 spies and 2 collabs, I have 1 spy XD Did all like in your video. My allies barely can hold front and can't atack at all. Bridgehead suffering supply problems, esp when adding another army in that bridgehead. Fighters can barely achieve air superiority. Main 2 armies are doing better, but also suffering from supply problems. Building railways and supply hubs. You won in 38 and im still trying to break through in 39. I dont have plane design and selling equipment dlc. playing on ironman normal. This is 3rd attempt, one goes worse than previous :)

Couple of things I would like to add from my own Japanese gameplays: 1. Build more civs (at least 36-40), build level 3 infrastructure in those underdeveloped provinces if you wish. 2. If you want to play naval then you must priotize steel for ships, and build some additional dockyards if needed (2 sets of 5 for cruisers, 9 for the one line of destroyers). 3. Get anti air on the cruisers, depth charges and passive sonar for destroyers because British submarines can be painful. 4. Research Anti air very early, Japan doesn’t have it for some reason. When fighting china you don’t have to build collaboration governments prior to invasion. It can be during and it takes a better toll on your economy if you do so. 5. Tanks are absolutely worth it as Japan, you conquer Chinese industry and it gives you all the industry you could need. 6. Cavalry is absolutely dogshit, do not use it. 7. Focus on getting air early, really helps in the wrong run. 8. Should’ve stated before but getting airplane catapult on cruisers or destroyers helps a lot in hunting British ships (usually they are cowards). 9. Do not annex all Chinese cores, just the main part. You will have to build compliance and cannot get it with the collab governments. 10. Long term goal should be making battleships, great for countering US navy.

39:37 BITERSTEEL WHAT THE HELL BOY 😳🫢

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.

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

Would you consider doing one of these for Italy to complete the Axis?

Leading man right here!

I start off by invading Siam to maintain access to rubber without having to naval invade later on. And then I just refuse to do Marco Polo Incident, wait for the Chinese to start an incident, and then get a war goal without the debuffs against China. Though sometimes that does take time and the Chinese don't always form their faction.

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

Luxembourg is a pigeon 52:25

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.

looking forward for the new dlc dev diary, south america finally

hi i don't really know if you take inspiration from comments but i have a video idea for you play turkey and restore the ottoman empire and take all the core states and restore the borders of the ottoman empire and when you've finished it it go in the great war mod and win without losing territory or something like that i know the ottoman empire is very bad in the first world war but hope you can try and win

Bittlesteel long form content really pumps my nads

Now to do this with Expert AI, with enemy reinforcements on. Today on China getting free 156 divisions.

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

Bro, where was this 2 days ago when I was doing multiplayer Japan and mucking up

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

Manly men who dresses as french maid at home gang 👇

The new music actually goes hard

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

Looks like guides are back on the menu boys

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

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

Rework doko Probably the only nation with no dedicated tree for factories, some people like it I guess, but I like to make things before deciding on a path.

Nice

Loving the music in there. Nice vid.