Gitlab CI/CD Pipeline keeps failing for terraform plan/apply (terraform layered architecture) - gitlab-ci

Question

So I currently I have a layered architecture with terraform. Here is what my directory looks like.
.
├── README.md
├── application-layer
│   ├── datasources.tf
│   ├── ec2.tf
│   ├── providers.tf
│   ├── terraform.tfvars
│   └── variables.tf
└── network-layer
├── gateways.tf
├── outputs.tf
├── providers.tf
├── routes.tf
├── securitygroups.tf
├── subnet.tf
├── terraform.tfvars
├── variables.tf
└── vpc.tf
I'm having trouble with getting the GitLab CI pipeline to succeed at the plan/apply stages, specifically for the application-layer. The application layer pulls the state from the network layer so the ec2 instances in the application-layer, can reference security groups in the network-layer. The network-layer needs to be applied first, then the application-layer can be applied. Otherwise even running the terraform commands manually will fail. However, I'm having a hard understanding of how to translate that into the GitLab CI yaml. This is what I currently have, but the pipeline passes at plan-network, but fails at plan-app.
stages:
- format
- validate
- plan
- apply
image:
name: hashicorp/terraform:light
entrypoint:
- '/usr/bin/env'
- 'PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin'
before_script:
- terraform init
- terraform --version
- export AWS_ACCESS_KEY=${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}
- export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}
fmt-network:
stage: format
before_script:
- cd network-layer
- terraform init
script:
- terraform fmt
allow_failure: false
validate-network:
stage: validate
before_script:
- cd network-layer
- terraform init
script:
- terraform validate
plan-network:
stage: plan
before_script:
- cd network-layer
- terraform init
script:
- terraform plan
dependencies:
- validate-network
apply-network:
stage: apply
before_script:
- cd network-layer
- terraform init
script:
- terraform apply --auto-approve
dependencies:
- plan-network
artifacts:
when: always
fmt-app:
stage: format
before_script:
- cd application-layer
- terraform init
script:
- terraform fmt
allow_failure: false
validate-app:
stage: validate
before_script:
- cd application-layer
- terraform init
script:
- terraform validate
plan-app:
stage: plan
before_script:
- cd application-layer
- terraform init
script:
- terraform plan
dependencies:
- validate-app
apply-app:
stage: apply
before_script:
- cd application-layer
- terraform init
script:
- terraform apply --auto-approve
dependencies:
- plan-app
I have tried adding an artifact and a path to go into the folders instead of cd into each but that didn't work.
I have also tried adding a "needs" section to the plan-app that reads :
plan-app:
stage: plan
before_script:
- cd application-layer
- terraform init
needs: ["apply-network"]
script:
- terraform plan
however I get this error "plan-app job: need apply-network is not defined in current or prior stages"