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Policy optimization methods with function approximation are widely used in multi-agent reinforcement learning. However, it remains elusive how to design such algorithms with statistical guarantees. Leveraging a multi-agent performance…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-09 Yulai Zhao , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Jason D. Lee

We propose a reinforcement learning algorithm for stationary mean-field games, where the goal is to learn a pair of mean-field state and stationary policy that constitutes the Nash equilibrium. When viewing the mean-field state and the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-12 Qiaomin Xie , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Andreea Minca

In this paper, we propose a provably convergent and practical framework for multi-objective reinforcement learning with max-min criterion. From a game-theoretic perspective, we reformulate max-min multi-objective reinforcement learning as a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-24 Woohyeon Byeon , Giseung Park , Jongseong Chae , Amir Leshem , Youngchul Sung

Recent developments in domains such as non-local games, quantum interactive proofs, and quantum generative adversarial networks have renewed interest in quantum game theory and, specifically, quantum zero-sum games. Central to classical…

We explore the use of policy approximations to reduce the computational cost of learning Nash equilibria in zero-sum stochastic games. We propose a new Q-learning type algorithm that uses a sequence of entropy-regularized soft policies to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-29 Yue Guan , Qifan Zhang , Panagiotis Tsiotras

Softmax policy gradient is a popular algorithm for policy optimization in single-agent reinforcement learning, particularly since projection is not needed for each gradient update. However, in multi-agent systems, the lack of central…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-11-01 Runyu Zhang , Jincheng Mei , Bo Dai , Dale Schuurmans , Na Li

Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) lies at the heart of a plethora of applications involving the interaction of a group of agents in a shared unknown environment. A prominent framework for studying MARL is Markov games, with the goal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-17 Tong Yang , Bo Dai , Lin Xiao , Yuejie Chi

Model-based reinforcement learning (RL), which finds an optimal policy using an empirical model, has long been recognized as one of the corner stones of RL. It is especially suitable for multi-agent RL (MARL), as it naturally decouples the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-10 Kaiqing Zhang , Sham M. Kakade , Tamer Başar , Lin F. Yang

Markov Decision Processes are classically solved using Value Iteration and Policy Iteration algorithms. Recent interest in Reinforcement Learning has motivated the study of methods inspired by optimization, such as gradient ascent. Among…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-05 Sajad Khodadadian , Prakirt Raj Jhunjhunwala , Sushil Mahavir Varma , Siva Theja Maguluri

No-regret learning dynamics play a central role in game theory, enabling decentralized convergence to equilibrium for concepts such as Coarse Correlated Equilibrium (CCE) or Correlated Equilibrium (CE). In this work, we improve the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-11-05 Asrin Efe Yorulmaz , Tamer Başar

We examine online safe multi-agent reinforcement learning using constrained Markov games in which agents compete by maximizing their expected total rewards under a constraint on expected total utilities. Our focus is confined to an episodic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-02 Dongsheng Ding , Xiaohan Wei , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Mihailo R. Jovanović

We consider online learning in multi-player smooth monotone games. Existing algorithms have limitations such as (1) being only applicable to strongly monotone games; (2) lacking the no-regret guarantee; (3) having only asymptotic or slow…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-06 Yang Cai , Weiqiang Zheng

The convergence of online learning algorithms in games under self-play is a fundamental question in game theory and machine learning. Among various notions of convergence, last-iterate convergence is particularly desirable, as it reflects…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-11-11 Yang Cai , Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Weiqiang Zheng

Two-player games such as board games have long been used as traditional benchmarks for reinforcement learning. This work revisits a policy optimization method with reverse Kullback-Leibler regularization and entropy regularization and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Kazuki Ota , Takayuki Osa , Motoki Omura , Tatsuya Harada

Self-play via online learning is one of the premier ways to solve large-scale two-player zero-sum games, both in theory and practice. Particularly popular algorithms include optimistic multiplicative weights update (OMWU) and optimistic…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-01-22 Yang Cai , Gabriele Farina , Julien Grand-Clément , Christian Kroer , Chung-Wei Lee , Haipeng Luo , Weiqiang Zheng

We study the problem of learning Nash equilibria in offline two-player zero-sum Markov games. While existing approaches often rely on explicit pessimism to address distribution shift, we show that KL regularization alone suffices to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Claire Chen , Yuheng Zhang , Xinyu Liu , Zixuan Xie , Shuze Daniel Liu , Nan Jiang

In stochastic dynamic environments, team Markov games have emerged as a versatile paradigm for studying sequential decision-making problems of fully cooperative multi-agent systems. However, the optimality of the derived policies is usually…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-05-03 Feng Huang , Ming Cao , Long Wang

Learning Nash equilibrium (NE) in complex zero-sum games with multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) can be extremely computationally expensive. Curriculum learning is an effective way to accelerate learning, but an under-explored…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-19 Jiayu Chen , Zelai Xu , Yunfei Li , Chao Yu , Jiaming Song , Huazhong Yang , Fei Fang , Yu Wang , Yi Wu

An abundance of recent impossibility results establish that regret minimization in Markov games with adversarial opponents is both statistically and computationally intractable. Nevertheless, none of these results preclude the possibility…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Liad Erez , Tal Lancewicki , Uri Sherman , Tomer Koren , Yishay Mansour

Optimization of parameterized policies for reinforcement learning (RL) is an important and challenging problem in artificial intelligence. Among the most common approaches are algorithms based on gradient ascent of a score function…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-15 Sriram Srinivasan , Marc Lanctot , Vinicius Zambaldi , Julien Perolat , Karl Tuyls , Remi Munos , Michael Bowling