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Scalable Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning Architecture for Semi-MDP Real-Time Strategy Games

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Neural Computing for Advanced Applications (NCAA 2020)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1265))

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Abstract

Action-value has been widely used in multi-agent reinforcement learning. However, action-value is hard to be adapted to scenarios such as real-time strategy games where the number of agents can vary from time to time. In this paper, we explore approaches of avoiding the action-value in systems in order to make multi-agent architectures more scalable. We present a general architecture for real-time strategy games and design the global reward function which can fit into it. In addition, in our architecture, we also propose the algorithm without human knowledge which can work for Semi Markov Decision Processes where rewards cannot be received until actions last for a while. To evaluate the performance of our approach, experiments with respect to micromanagement are carried out on a simplified real-time strategy game called MicroRTS. The result shows that the trained artificial intelligence is highly competitive against strong baseline robots.

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Acknowledgement

This work is supported by the national key research and development program of China under grant No. 2019YFB2102200, National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 61672154, No. 61972086, and the Fund of ZTE Corporation under Grant No. HC-CN-20190826009.

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Correspondence to Zhentao Wang or Weiwei Wu .

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Wang, Z., Wu, W., Huang, Z. (2020). Scalable Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning Architecture for Semi-MDP Real-Time Strategy Games. In: Zhang, H., Zhang, Z., Wu, Z., Hao, T. (eds) Neural Computing for Advanced Applications. NCAA 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1265. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7670-6_36

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7670-6_36

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-15-7669-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-15-7670-6

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