“Actor-Critic Policy Optimization in Partially Observable Multiagent Environments”, Sriram Srinivasan, Marc Lanctot, Vinicius Zambaldi, Julien Perolat, Karl Tuyls, Remi Munos, Michael Bowling2018-10-21 (; similar)⁠:

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 representing discounted return. In this paper, we examine the role of these policy gradient and actor-critic algorithms in partially-observable multiagent environments.

We show several candidate policy update rules and relate them to a foundation of regret minimization and multiagent learning techniques for the one-shot and tabular cases, leading to previously unknown convergence guarantees.

We apply our method to model-free multiagent reinforcement learning in adversarial sequential decision problems (zero-sum imperfect information games), using RL-style function approximation.

We evaluate on commonly used benchmark Poker domains, showing performance against fixed policies and empirical convergence to approximate Nash equilibria in self-play with rates similar to or better than a baseline model-free algorithm for zero sum games, without any domain-specific state space reductions.