Battle for Wesnoth

Last reviewed Sep 13, 2026 · 755 words

The official Battle for Wesnoth multiplayer server is free, public and usually the better choice. Run wesnothd yourself for exactly three reasons: a private lobby for your group, a LAN or offline event with no internet, or pinning the version your friends play so that an upgrade does not split the party. If none of those apply, install the game, click Multiplayer, and be done. If one does, the server side is small, undemanding and mildly annoying, in that order.

wesnothd is a headless process, not a game install

The multiplayer server is a separate binary that ships with the game or, on Debian-based systems, in a versioned package alongside it (the package name carries the release series, something like wesnoth-1.18-server). It listens on TCP 15000 by default, holds no assets, and does not run the game logic: the clients simulate the match and the server relays moves and hosts the lobby. That is why the 512 MB in the listing is generous. It runs happily on a Raspberry Pi or the smallest VPS you can buy, and idle CPU is effectively zero.

wesnothd -p 15000 -c /etc/wesnothd/server.cfg

Point clients at your hostname in the multiplayer connection dialog, open 15000 on the firewall, and you have a lobby. Wrap the process in a systemd unit with Restart=on-failure so a crash does not empty the lobby silently, and leave logging at the default level, which is quiet enough that a month of play fits in a few hundred kilobytes. There is no official Docker image and no web UI, which matches the listing's bare-metal and binary deployment options: the server is a config file and a process, administered the way things were administered in 2005.

Clients must match the server, minor version included

This is the rule that generates most "cannot connect" reports. A 1.18 client will not join a 1.16 server and vice versa, and the server refuses rather than degrading. The versions_accepted key in server.cfg controls the match (wildcards are allowed, so 1.18.* accepts the whole series), and the practical consequence is that you and everyone you play with need to upgrade together. That is also the strongest argument for self-hosting: you decide when the version changes, not the official server's schedule.

The rest of server.cfg is a short list of sensible knobs: a message of the day, a connection cap, a maximum number of connections per IP, ban and redirect sections, and an administrator password. Wesnoth's wiki documents every key and it is a 15-minute read.

Add-ons come from somewhere else

Custom eras, maps and campaigns are fetched by clients from the official add-on server, and every player in a game needs the same add-ons installed locally. Your wesnothd does not serve them, and a player missing the era a game uses sees a mismatch error at the join step rather than a download prompt. For an offline LAN this means pre-installing whatever your group wants to play on every machine while you still have internet. Running your own add-on server (campaignd) is possible but is a separate project with no practical payoff for a friends-and-family lobby.

The genre is the real filter

Wesnoth is a turn-based hex strategy game with a 20-year content library, a built-in map editor, and matches that take an hour or two. That appeals to a specific crowd, and it is the crowd, not the software, that decides whether a private server is worth the trouble. Compared with the games where dedicated servers are the norm, the hosting burden here is tiny: OpenTTD and Luanti keep persistent worlds that need saving and backing up, Xonotic needs tuned tick rates. A Wesnoth server keeps nothing between sessions except its ban list. The rest of the games category is where the heavier hosting lives.

What I'd do

If you and a few friends play regularly, put wesnothd on whatever always-on box you already have, pin versions_accepted to the series everyone runs, set an admin password, and forget about it. Upgrade the server the same weekend the group upgrades the game. For a one-off LAN party, install the versioned server package on any laptop, pre-download the add-ons your group uses, and hand out the IP. For everything else, the official lobby is right there and costs nothing.