arXiv AI

Deep Reinforcement Learning to Master the Asymmetric Strategy of Baghchal

arXiv:2607. 18296v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Baghchal is a two-player asymmetric board game with Nepali origins where four tigers are to capture goats and twenty goats desire to keep tigers in immobility.

arXiv AI
Jun 19

Hierarchical Control in Multi-Agent Games: LLM-based Planning and RL Execution

arXiv:2606. 20014v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) has achieved strong performance in sequential decision-making, yet scaling to complex multi-agent environments remains challenging due to sparse rewards, large state-action spaces, and the difficulty of learning coordinated strategies.

By Jannik H\"osch, Alessandro Sestini, Florian Fuchs, Amir Baghi, Joakim Bergdahl, Konrad Tollmar, Jean-Philippe Barrette-LaPierre, Linus Gissl\'en
arXiv AI
Jun 30

Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning in StarCraft Micromanagement with Influence Maps and Cluster-based Scripts

arXiv:2606. 30092v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Real-time strategy (RTS) games present significant AI challenges, characterized by expansive state-action spaces arising from multi-unit coordination in continuous battlefields, and sparse delayed rewards stemming from final win/lose signals.

By Chunhui Bai, Changhe Li, Dequan Li, Xinye Cai, Shengxiang Yang
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 10

Discovering Interpretable Multi-Parameter Control Policies for Evolutionary Algorithms Using Deep Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2606. 10129v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: While deep Reinforcement Learning (deep-RL) has been increasingly applied to parameter control in evolutionary algorithms, rigorous theoretical analysis of parameter control remains largely restricted to single-parameter settings, owing to the difficulty of deriving effective, interpretable multi-parameter policies amenable to formal study.

By Tai Nguyen, Phong Le, Carola Doerr, Nguyen Dang
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
Sep 4

Local Updates, Global Learning (LUGL): Playing Games with non-incremental Learners

The paper introduces LUGL (Local Updates, Global Learning), a framework that separates data collection from model fitting, allowing non‑incremental learners such as gradient‑boosted trees (LightGBM) to be used in reinforcement learning for games. LUGL alternates between a local update phase—where agents play self‑play games and store tabular updates—and a global learning phase—where a function approximator is trained on the accumulated table before it is reset. Experiments on both perfect‑information and imperfect‑information games show that LightGBM‑based agents perform competitively or better than neural‑network baselines like DQN and DeepCFR.

By David Milec, Spyridon Samothrakis, Michael Fairbank, Dennis J. N. J. Soemers