arXiv AI

Temporal-Difference Learning for Dragonchess

The paper examines the performance of evolutionary transfer learning and TD(lambda) in the three‑dimensional chess game Dragonchess. By re‑implementing the engine in C++ to accelerate play, the authors ran 10,000 games with statistical confidence, showing both adaptive methods outperform all other agents in a round‑robin tournament. The results indicate no significant performance difference between the evolved and learned evaluation functions, demonstrating the effectiveness of adaptive techniques in complex, novel game domains.

arXiv AI
Sep 23

PTCG-Bench: Can LLM Agents Master Pok\'emon Trading Card Game?

PTCG-Bench is a new benchmark that uses the Pokémon Trading Card Game to evaluate large language model (LLM) agents on two fronts: their decision‑making within a single complex game environment and their capacity to evolve through accumulated experience. The benchmark includes a modular harness ablation to isolate agent performance from model capability. Experiments show that while LLM agents can achieve non‑trivial gameplay, sustained self‑evolution remains difficult and performance depends on harness design.

By Dongdong Hua, Yifei Sun, Renhong Huang, Feng Gao, Chunping Wang, Yang Yang
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 4

LLM-Guided Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive NPC Behavior in Multi-Agent Combat Games

The paper explores a runtime strategy-selection framework where a large language model (LLM) guides a pre‑trained reinforcement learning (RL) policy for non‑player characters (NPCs) in a Unity combat game without altering the underlying policy. Five NPC agents sharing a PPO policy were compared in a baseline setup and an LLM‑augmented setup, where a locally hosted Mistral 7B model assigns one of four tactical tags every five seconds based on live game state. Across 600 episodes against three scripted opponents, the LLM‑augmented agents more than doubled their win rate against a Balanced opponent, improved performance against an Evasive opponent, but struggled against an Aggressive opponent due to over‑reliance on encirclement; analysis of 2,430 strategy selections revealed limited zero‑shot differentiation with the model favoring Surround in 83.8% of cases.

By Hrithika Deepu Nair, Kayvan Karim
arXiv AI
6d ago

Game Arena: Strategic LLM Evaluation in Competitive Environments

Game Arena is an open, continuously expanding platform that evaluates large language models through competitive games, allowing head‑to‑head matchups in structured environments. Unlike static benchmarks, it prevents performance saturation by increasing gameplay difficulty as models improve. The report outlines the infrastructure and presents three pilot games—Chess, Poker, and Werewolf—covering perfect information, imperfect information, and multiplayer settings, and details evaluation metrics and competition results.

By Bovard Doerschuk-Tiberi, Yao Yan, Justin Chiu, Hann Wang, Timothy Chung, Martyna Plomecka, John Schultz, Jon Lipovetz, Clayton Drazner, Yuchen Zhuang, Jaimie Hwang, Nate Keating, Riley Jones, Andrew Lee, Oran Kelly, Ian Gemp, Michael Aaron, Laurel Prince, Kate Larson, Jeff Moser, Harrison Jobe, Chad Woodford, Siqi Liu, Andrew Wang, Bo Chang, Christopher D'Mello, Diane Chaleff, Addison Howard, Johnny Yip, Chuck Sugnet, Antonio Gulli, Meghan O'Connell, Will Cukierski, Nenad Tomasev, Dima Yeroshenko, Kinjal Parekh, Roxanne Daniel, Marc Lanctot, Domino Weir, Elsa Dong, Daniel Hennes, Melissa Nalubwama, Robert Fraser, Ryan Trostle, Jun Peng, Tom Mason, Lloyd Hightower, Chiamaka Chukwuka, Yuexiang Zhai, Phoebe Kirk, Yi Su, Yuting Han, Jie Ren, Chris Prichard, Sahand Sharifzadeh, Karim Hakimzadeh, DJ Sterling, Meg Risdal, Kate Olszewska, Ya Xu, Orhan Firat, Minmin Chen