# Local Advantage Networks for Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.12458 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12458/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Dec 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Learning Phrase Representations using RNN Encoder-Decoder for Statistical Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.1078/) (2014)
- [Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.5602/) (2013)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning with Double Q-learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.06461/) (2015)
- [Multi-Agent Actor-Critic for Mixed Cooperative-Competitive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02275/) (2017)
- [The Surprising Effectiveness of PPO in Cooperative, Multi-Agent Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01955/) (2021)
- [Dueling Network Architectures for Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06581/) (2015)
- [Counterfactual Multi-Agent Policy Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08926/) (2017)
- [QMIX: Monotonic Value Function Factorisation for Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.11485/) (2018)
- [The StarCraft Multi-Agent Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.04043/) (2019)
- [Is Independent Learning All You Need in the StarCraft Multi-Agent Challenge?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.09533/) (2020)
- [QPLEX: Duplex Dueling Multi-Agent Q-Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.01062/) (2020)
- [TarMAC: Targeted Multi-Agent Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.11187/) (2018)
- [MAVEN: Multi-Agent Variational Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07483/) (2019)
- [Multiagent Cooperation and Competition with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.08779/) (2015)
- [A Survey and Critique of Multiagent Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.05587/) (2018)
- [ROMA: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Emergent Roles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08039/) (2020)
- [Stabilising Experience Replay for Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08887/) (2017)
- [Qatten: A General Framework for Cooperative Multiagent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03939/) (2020)
- [Learn What Not to Learn: Action Elimination with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02121/) (2018)
- [Contrasting Centralized and Decentralized Critics in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04402/) (2021)
- [R-MADDPG for Partially Observable Environments and Limited Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06684/) (2020)
- [Steady State Analysis of Episodic Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.06631/) (2020)
- [Stay Ahead of Poachers: Illegal Wildlife Poaching Prediction and Patrol Planning Under Uncertainty with Field Test Evaluations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06669/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Many recent successful off-policy multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) algorithms for cooperative partially observable environments focus on finding factorized value functions, leading to convoluted network structures. Building on the structure of independent Q-learners, our LAN algorithm takes a radically different approach, leveraging a dueling architecture to learn for each agent a decentralized best-response policies via individual advantage functions. The learning is stabilized by a centralized critic whose primary objective is to reduce the moving target problem of the individual advantages. The critic, whose network's size is independent of the number of agents, is cast aside after learning. Evaluation on the StarCraft II multi-agent challenge benchmark shows that LAN reaches state-of-the-art performance and is highly scalable with respect to the number of agents, opening up a promising alternative direction for MARL research.