Efficient Planning in Combinatorial Action Spaces with Applications to Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
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Abstract (arXiv)
A practical challenge in reinforcement learning are combinatorial action spaces that make planning computationally demanding. For example, in cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning, a potentially large number of agents jointly optimize a global reward function, which leads to a combinatorial blow-up in the action space by the number of agents. As a minimal requirement, we assume access to an argmax oracle that allows to efficiently compute the greedy policy for any Q-function in the model class. Building on recent work in planning with local access to a simulator and linear function approximation, we propose efficient algorithms for this setting that lead to polynomial compute and query complexity in all relevant problem parameters. For the special case where the feature decomposition is additive, we further improve the bounds and extend the results to the kernelized setting with an efficient algorithm.
Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 41 of its 91 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 Feb 2023.
Builds on
41 of 91 references.
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29 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2023: 1; 2024: 2; 2025: 1; 2026: 2.
6 papers.
- 2023Distributionally Robust Model-based Reinforcement Learning with Large State Spacescited by 17
- 2024Mean-Field Sampling for Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 9
- 2024Efficient Monte Carlo Tree Search via On-the-Fly State-Conditioned Action Abstractioncited by 6
- 2025Reinforcement learning with combinatorial actions for coupled restless banditscited by 5
- 2026Graphon Mean-Field Subsampling for Cooperative Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
- 2026Latent Spherical Flow Policy for Reinforcement Learning with Combinatorial Actionscited by 0
- 2026Graphon Mean-Field Subsampling for Cooperative Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning18 Feb 2026
- 2026Latent Spherical Flow Policy for Reinforcement Learning with Combinatorial Actions29 Jan 2026
- 2025Reinforcement learning with combinatorial actions for coupled restless bandits1 Mar 2025
- 2024Mean-Field Sampling for Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning1 Dec 2024
- 2024Efficient Monte Carlo Tree Search via On-the-Fly State-Conditioned Action Abstraction2 Jun 2024
- 2023Distributionally Robust Model-based Reinforcement Learning with Large State Spaces5 Sep 2023