arXiv Machine Learning By Hrithika Deepu Nair, Kayvan Karim

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

Read the original on arXiv Machine Learning →

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.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at arXiv Machine Learning.

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
Sep 7

A Schema Bounded Language Model for Refining Robot Policies Without Destabilizing Local Learning

The paper presents a decentralized navigation framework for composite heterogeneous robots that integrates a large language model (LLM) policy agent, an Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) bandit, and a Double Deep Q-Network (Double DQN) controller. Each robot independently generates and refines policies at the round level using LLM inference, while the Double DQN handles tick-level action selection based on navigation variables and LLM priors. Across 30 rounds, the full configuration achieved all goals with the lowest median completion time (42 ticks) and a 25–39% improvement over other setups.

By Chongwen Dong, Mithun Paul Saint-Germain, Pinjari Asif, Carlo R. daCunha
arXiv AI
Jun 2

MindGames Arena Generalization Track: In2AI Solution with Delayed Per-Step Reward Attribution

arXiv:2606. 00017v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Training language model agents for multi-agent strategic interaction presents a core difficulty: the quality of any action may depend on future events that never materialize, on moves that violate game rules, or on decisions made by other players.

By Aliaksei Korshuk, Alexander Buyantuev, Ilya Makarov
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 28

Shared Actors Need Not Share Critics: Effects of Value Mismatch in Parallel Reinforcement Learning

The paper investigates the problem of sharing a single critic across multiple parallel environments in reinforcement learning. It shows that when environments assign different expected returns to the same state, a shared critic must reconcile conflicting value targets, which can distort advantage estimates and misguide policy updates. The authors propose a simple fix—providing the critic with the environment index—demonstrating through bandit models and experiments on CartPole, MuJoCo, BipedalWalker, and 16 Procgen games that this conditional critic stabilizes learning and boosts returns, achieving a 40.8% improvement in aggregate normalized return on unseen levels.

By Zhenya Liu, Yang Meng, Zhuokai Zhao, Xuefeng Liu, Yuxin Chen