You aren’t drawing the armies’ movement path, but the new front they’re going to advance toward. When you're drawing your battle plan, don’t think that’s the path your armies will actually move along. This one’s a little obvious… unless you’re messing it up, in which case you’re probably really frustrated. Try building lots of civilian factories at first, then start splashing in military factories when your production has some flexibility. They’re an investment, but they’re worth it in the long run. So they accelerate your overall production rate down the line. Here’s the lowdown: they increase the number of structures you can build at once (and, to some degree, the speed in which you build them). The Hearts of Iron IV tutorial loves to tell you to build civilian factories, even before military factories, but it doesn’t do a great job of explaining what civilian factories actually do. ‘Hearts of Iron 4’ Preorders Open, Game Comes With Free DLC.