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arXiv · 2211.12075

Greedy based Value Representation for Optimal Coordination in Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning

Lipeng Wan·Zeyang Liu·Xingyu Chen·Xuguang Lan·Nanning Zheng
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Abstract

Due to the representation limitation of the joint Q value function, multi-agent reinforcement learning methods with linear value decomposition (LVD) or monotonic value decomposition (MVD) suffer from relative overgeneralization. As a result, they can not ensure optimal consistency (i.e., the correspondence between individual greedy actions and the maximal true Q value). In this paper, we derive the expression of the joint Q value function of LVD and MVD. According to the expression, we draw a transition diagram, where each self-transition node (STN) is a possible convergence. To ensure optimal consistency, the optimal node is required to be the unique STN. Therefore, we propose the greedy-based value representation (GVR), which turns the optimal node into an STN via inferior target shaping and further eliminates the non-optimal STNs via superior experience replay. In addition, GVR achieves an adaptive trade-off between optimality and stability. Our method outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in experiments on various benchmarks. Theoretical proofs and empirical results on matrix games demonstrate that GVR ensures optimal consistency under sufficient exploration.

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Lipeng Wan, Zeyang Liu, Xingyu Chen, Xuguang Lan, Nanning Zheng. 2022-11-22. Greedy based Value Representation for Optimal Coordination in Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning. https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.12075

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