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23a:Mandate
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
A mandate is a noble's request that your dwarves produce a certain item or type of item. Fulfilling the mandate gives the noble a happy thought.
Mandates should not be confused with demands.
The king's consort, advisor, philosopher, hammerer, and dungeon master make no mandates. Other nobles have varying numbers of maximum active mandates.
Production Order
When a noble makes a production mandate, you will have about a year to fulfill it. These mandates for the production of goods, and can specify type or material, just like export bans. Note that a single mug is counted as 1 item although 3 are produced from one raw material, so if you are short of the mandated material producing mugs is favorable. Getting the required items from a caravan will not fulfill a mandate. Making metal items includes smelting ore to create metal bars of that type. Due to the mechanics of smelting, one job can produce up to 2 metal bars (bronze, brass, steel, and electrum), these will count as 2 items.
If a production mandate expires without being fulfilled, the noble will get an unhappy thought, and one or more dwarves will be sentenced to punishment for the 'violation of production order' crime. The dwarf chosen tends to have a skill appropriate to the mandate, but random dwarves may be chosen as well. If the noble can't sentence any dwarves for punishment because of noble or legendary status, or the sentenced dwarves can't be punished because no officer is assigned, he will get another unhappy thought.
Export Ban
Export bans forbid the export of some goods, and can be for either goods of a certain type, like chain mail, or goods of a certain material, like copper items.
Violating an export ban by trading any of the item away is a crime for each of the haulers who brought a prohibited item (that was sold) to the trade depot - each dwarf will be incriminated the instant the item is carried off the map (whether by a pack animal or a wagon). Items that are subject to export bans are displayed in purple text in the trade window. Note that if an item is traded to a caravan and is subsequently placed under an export ban, dwarves will be punished even though the trade took place before the ban went into effect, so if the caravan hasn't already left, any banned goods should be immediately purchased back from the traders; if a good was offered, then nothing can be done (aside from exploiting various oddities in the trade system, or murdering the mandater). Oddly, trading banned items which were carried to the depot in bins (but not the bins themselves) does not result in any perceived crimes, perhaps because only the bin was brought to the depot, not the items inside it.
Job Order
If a particular guild represented at your fortress is not given enough work to do, its leader will meet with your Mayor who, at the beginning of the next season, will mandate that a particular number of jobs be completed at. Unlike normal production mandates, these jobs must be completed by the end of the season[Verify]. Successfully completing these jobs will give the guild leader a happy thought and increase the guild's morale. Failing to complete these jobs will result in the Manager being accused of the "Violation of Job Order" crime, but no punishment will be given; however, it will also give the guild leader an unhappy thought and increase unrest within the guild, and such unrest may lead to guild wage adjustments or work slowdowns.
Mining Order
Once the King has arrived at your fortress, he will begin mandating that you "mine to the yellow line", forcing you to eventually uncover the eerie glowing pits and discover the adamantine-lined chasm. Once the adamantine has been reached, the mandates will change, forcing you to mine the adamantine and/or make adamantine goods, eventually leading to the "Too Deep" ending. Failing to satisfy these mandates results in extremely cruel punishment toward your miners or metalsmiths - 200 days in prison or 100 hammerstrikes.
Mandates & preferences
Personal preferences have a strong influence on what type of items and what type of materials a noble bans for export or wants to have produced via mandates. Nobles with a preference for a specific item will often either ban that item or mandate its production; nobles with a preference for a specific material will, likewise, either ban the export of items made from that material, or mandate similar production.
Nobles with extraordinary preferences or preferences for items or materials that are too hard to produce (particularly rare gems) will be a problem for your fortress. If unavoidable, such nobles may be destined for an unfortunate accident - for the good of the fortress as a whole.
Viewing Mandates
Mandates are announced at the bottom of the screen, but if you miss the message, you can see if a noble is mandating anything on the nobles screen. If the uppercase bracketed word '[MANDATE]' next to a noble's name is grey, he is making no mandates. If brown, he is making a production mandate, and you have a lot of time to complete it. If yellow, you have a couple seasons before the mandate expires. If red, the mandate will expire very soon. If white, then it is an export ban.
Punishment
Failure to complete a mandate will generally result in the punishment of dwarves relevant to the mandate's criteria. The severity of the punishment depends on the effective rank of the noble - for example, violating a mandate placed by the tax collector is likely to only result in brief jail time or a beating, while violating the duke's mandate can result in extended jail time or as many as 10 hammerstrikes.