Chao Yu

Zelai Xu, Yancheng Liang, Chao Yu et al.

Self-play (SP) is a popular multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) framework for solving competitive games, where each agent optimizes policy by treating others as part of the environment. Despite the empirical successes, the theoretical properties of SP-based methods are limited to two-player zero-sum games. However, for mixed cooperative-competitive games where agents on the same team need to cooperate with each other, we can show a simple counter-example where SP-based methods cannot converge to a global Nash equilibrium (NE) with high probability. Alternatively, Policy-Space Response Oracles (PSRO) is an iterative framework for learning NE, where the best responses w.r.t. previous policies are learned in each iteration. PSRO can be directly extended to mixed cooperative-competitive settings by jointly learning team best responses with all convergence properties unchanged. However, PSRO requires repeatedly training joint policies from scratch till convergence, which makes it hard to scale to complex games. In this work, we develop a novel algorithm, Fictitious Cross-Play (FXP), which inherits the benefits from both frameworks. FXP simultaneously trains an SP-based main policy and a counter population of best response policies. The main policy is trained by fictitious self-play and cross-play against the counter population, while the counter policies are trained as the best responses to the main policy's past versions. We validate our method in matrix games and show that FXP converges to global NEs while SP methods fail. We also conduct experiments in a gridworld domain, where FXP achieves higher Elo ratings and lower exploitabilities than baselines, and a more challenging football game, where FXP defeats SOTA models with over 94% win rate.

Zongkai Liu, Qian Lin, Chao Yu et al.

Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) is an emerging field that aims to learn optimal multi-agent policies from pre-collected datasets. Compared to single-agent case, multi-agent setting involves a large joint state-action space and coupled behaviors of multiple agents, which bring extra complexity to offline policy optimization. In this work, we revisit the existing offline MARL methods and show that in certain scenarios they can be problematic, leading to uncoordinated behaviors and out-of-distribution (OOD) joint actions. To address these issues, we propose a new offline MARL algorithm, named In-Sample Sequential Policy Optimization (InSPO). InSPO sequentially updates each agent's policy in an in-sample manner, which not only avoids selecting OOD joint actions but also carefully considers teammates' updated policies to enhance coordination. Additionally, by thoroughly exploring low-probability actions in the behavior policy, InSPO can well address the issue of premature convergence to sub-optimal solutions. Theoretically, we prove InSPO guarantees monotonic policy improvement and converges to quantal response equilibrium (QRE). Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method compared to current state-of-the-art offline MARL methods.

Wen Liang, Chao Yu, Brian Whiteaker et al.

In the past few years, AlphaZero's exceptional capability in mastering intricate board games has garnered considerable interest. Initially designed for the game of Go, this revolutionary algorithm merges deep learning techniques with the Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) to surpass earlier top-tier methods. In our study, we broaden the use of AlphaZero to Gomoku, an age-old tactical board game also referred to as "Five in a Row." Intriguingly, Gomoku has innate challenges due to a bias towards the initial player, who has a theoretical advantage. To add value, we strive for a balanced game-play. Our tests demonstrate AlphaZero's versatility in adapting to games other than Go. MCTS has become a predominant algorithm for decision processes in intricate scenarios, especially board games. MCTS creates a search tree by examining potential future actions and uses random sampling to predict possible results. By leveraging the best of both worlds, the AlphaZero technique fuses deep learning from Reinforcement Learning with the balancing act of MCTS, establishing a fresh standard in game-playing AI. Its triumph is notably evident in board games such as Go, chess, and shogi.