mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

LLM as a Mastermind: A Survey of Strategic Reasoning with Large Language Models

arXiv 2404.01230 ↗First posted 1 Apr 2024cs.CLcited by 97

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning for agents, planning and code

Abstract (arXiv)

This paper presents a comprehensive survey of the current status and opportunities for Large Language Models (LLMs) in strategic reasoning, a sophisticated form of reasoning that necessitates understanding and predicting adversary actions in multi-agent settings while adjusting strategies accordingly. Strategic reasoning is distinguished by its focus on the dynamic and uncertain nature of interactions among multi-agents, where comprehending the environment and anticipating the behavior of others is crucial. We explore the scopes, applications, methodologies, and evaluation metrics related to strategic reasoning with LLMs, highlighting the burgeoning development in this area and the interdisciplinary approaches enhancing their decision-making performance. It aims to systematize and clarify the scattered literature on this subject, providing a systematic review that underscores the importance of strategic reasoning as a critical cognitive capability and offers insights into future research directions and potential improvements.

Key facts. Cited by 97 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 71 of its 92 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 Apr 2024.

Builds on

71 of 92 references.

Closest ancestors · 9

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024GTBench: Uncovering the Strategic Reasoning Limitations of LLMs via Game-Theoretic Evaluations19 Feb
  2. 2024Enhance Reasoning for Large Language Models in the Game Werewolf4 Feb
  3. 2024K-Level Reasoning: Establishing Higher Order Beliefs in Large Language Models for Strategic Reasoning2 Feb
  4. 2024CivRealm: A Learning and Reasoning Odyssey in Civilization for Decision-Making Agents19 Jan
  5. 2023Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Evaluating Strategic Planning and Execution of LLM Agents in an Auction Arena9 Oct
  6. 2023LLM-Coordination: Evaluating and Analyzing Multi-agent Coordination Abilities in Large Language Models5 Oct
  7. 2023Avalon's Game of Thoughts: Battle Against Deception through Recursive Contemplation2 Oct
  8. 2023Large Language Models on the Chessboard: A Study on ChatGPT's Formal Language Comprehension and Complex Reasoning Skills29 Aug
  9. 2023Strategic Reasoning with Language Models30 May

Other references · 62

  1. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  2. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
  3. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  4. 2022Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasonerscited by 4,323
  5. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,500
  6. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,203
  7. 2023The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Surveycited by 1,422
  8. 2024Large Language Model based Multi-Agents: A Survey of Progress and Challengescited by 752
  9. 2017A Brief Survey of Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 466
  10. 2021A Diverse Corpus for Evaluating and Developing English Math Word Problem Solverscited by 314
  11. 2023MedAgents: Large Language Models as Collaborators for Zero-shot Medical Reasoningcited by 311
  12. 2023Alphazero-like Tree-Search can Guide Large Language Model Decoding and Trainingcited by 291
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  3. 2023Exploring Large Language Models for Communication Games: An Empirical Study on Werewolfcited by 238
  4. 2022Neural Theory-of-Mind? On the Limits of Social Intelligence in Large LMscited by 220
  5. 2023Playing repeated games with Large Language Modelscited by 213
  6. 2023Improving Language Model Negotiation with Self-Play and In-Context Learning from AI Feedbackcited by 202
  7. 2023Understanding Social Reasoning in Language Models with Language Modelscited by 166
  8. 2023EconAgent: Large Language Model-Empowered Agents for Simulating Macroeconomic Activitiescited by 154
  9. 2023Language Agents with Reinforcement Learning for Strategic Play in the Werewolf Gamecited by 148
  10. 2023War and Peace (WarAgent): Large Language Model-based Multi-Agent Simulation of World Warscited by 143
  11. 2023Theory of Mind for Multi-Agent Collaboration via Large Language Modelscited by 129
  12. 2023Retroformer: Retrospective Large Language Agents with Policy Gradient Optimizationcited by 110
  13. 2022CommonsenseQA 2.0: Exposing the Limits of AI through Gamificationcited by 108
  14. 2024Systematic Biases in LLM Simulations of Debatescited by 98
  15. 2023Cooperation, Competition, and Maliciousness: LLM-Stakeholders Interactive Negotiationcited by 94
  16. 2024Agent-Pro: Learning to Evolve via Policy-Level Reflection and Optimizationcited by 93
  17. 2023Can Large Language Models Serve as Rational Players in Game Theory? A Systematic Analysiscited by 91
  18. 2023Think Twice: Perspective-Taking Improves Large Language Models' Theory-of-Mind Capabilitiescited by 86
  19. 2023Large Language Models Play StarCraft II: Benchmarks and A Chain of Summarization Approachcited by 79
  20. 2023ChessGPT: Bridging Policy Learning and Language Modelingcited by 73
  21. 2023Suspicion-Agent: Playing Imperfect Information Games with Theory of Mind Aware GPT-4cited by 67
  22. 2024How Far Are We on the Decision-Making of LLMs? Evaluating LLMs' Gaming Ability in Multi-Agent Environmentscited by 66
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  24. 2023The Wall Street Neophyte: A Zero-Shot Analysis of ChatGPT Over MultiModal Stock Movement Prediction Challengescited by 59
  25. 2023MAgIC: Investigation of Large Language Model Powered Multi-Agent in Cognition, Adaptability, Rationality and Collaborationcited by 56
  26. 2024OpenToM: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating Theory-of-Mind Reasoning Capabilities of Large Language Modelscited by 54
  27. 2024Shall We Team Up: Exploring Spontaneous Cooperation of Competing LLM Agentscited by 48
  28. 2023Hoodwinked: Deception and Cooperation in a Text-Based Game for Language Modelscited by 46
  29. 2024Measuring Bargaining Abilities of LLMs: A Benchmark and A Buyer-Enhancement Methodcited by 44
  30. 2023Welfare Diplomacy: Benchmarking Language Model Cooperationcited by 43
  31. 2023Controlling Large Language Model-based Agents for Large-Scale Decision-Making: An Actor-Critic Approachcited by 38
  32. 2023Urban Generative Intelligence (UGI): A Foundational Platform for Agents in Embodied City Environmentcited by 37
  33. 2023GameEval: Evaluating LLMs on Conversational Gamescited by 35
  34. 2024LLMArena: Assessing Capabilities of Large Language Models in Dynamic Multi-Agent Environmentscited by 35
  35. 2023Can Large Language Models Play Text Games Well? Current State-of-the-Art and Open Questionscited by 30
  36. 2023Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 30
  37. 2023Deciphering Digital Detectives: Understanding LLM Behaviors and Capabilities in Multi-Agent Mystery Gamescited by 29
  38. 2024Steering Language Models with Game-Theoretic Solverscited by 28

50 most cited of 62 All 62 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 25; 2025: 51; 2026: 21.

97 papers.

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  1. 2024Scaling Synthetic Data Creation with 1,000,000,000 Personascited by 397
  2. 2025From System 1 to System 2: A Survey of Reasoning Large Language Modelscited by 319
  3. 2025Advances and Challenges in Foundation Agents: From Brain-Inspired Intelligence to Evolutionary, Collaborative, and Safe Systemscited by 125
  4. 2025SPIRAL: Self-Play on Zero-Sum Games Incentivizes Reasoning via Multi-Agent Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learningcited by 89
  5. 2024Internal Consistency and Self-Feedback in Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 49
  6. 2024Moral Alignment for LLM Agentscited by 39
  7. 2024Richelieu: Self-Evolving LLM-Based Agents for AI Diplomacycited by 36
  8. 2025OS Agents: A Survey on MLLM-based Agents for General Computing Devices Usecited by 35
  9. 2025Orak: A Foundational Benchmark for Training and Evaluating LLM Agents on Diverse Video Gamescited by 30
  10. 2025SPIN-Bench: How Well Do LLMs Plan Strategically and Reason Socially?cited by 24
  11. 2024A Survey on Large Language Model-Based Social Agents in Game-Theoretic Scenarioscited by 23
  12. 2024ACC-Collab: An Actor-Critic Approach to Multi-Agent LLM Collaborationcited by 22
38 more
  1. 2025Mind with Eyes: from Language Reasoning to Multimodal Reasoningcited by 22
  2. 2024TMGBench: A Systematic Game Benchmark for Evaluating Strategic Reasoning Abilities of LLMscited by 21
  3. 2025A Survey of Reasoning and Agentic Systems in Time Series with Large Language Modelscited by 21
  4. 2024BattleAgent: Multi-modal Dynamic Emulation on Historical Battles to Complement Historical Analysiscited by 20
  5. 2025LLM Economist: Large Population Models and Mechanism Design in Multi-Agent Generative Simulacracited by 20
  6. 2025Shop-R1: Rewarding LLMs to Simulate Human Behavior in Online Shopping via Reinforcement Learningcited by 19
  7. 2024A Systematic Assessment of OpenAI o1-Preview for Higher Order Thinking in Educationcited by 16
  8. 2024Interactive Speculative Planning: Enhance Agent Efficiency through Co-design of System and User Interfacecited by 15
  9. 2025Game Theory Meets Large Language Models: A Systematic Survey with Taxonomy and New Frontierscited by 14
  10. 2025LLM Strategic Reasoning: Agentic Study through Behavioral Game Theorycited by 14
  11. 2026Stabilizing Recurrent Dynamics for Test-Time Scalable Latent Reasoning in Looped Language Modelscited by 14
  12. 2025Reinforcement Fine-Tuning Powers Reasoning Capability of Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 13
  13. 2025Is Your LLM Overcharging You? Tokenization, Transparency, and Incentivescited by 13
  14. 2025A Practical Guide for Designing, Developing, and Deploying Production-Grade Agentic AI Workflowscited by 13
  15. 2025Agentsway -- Software Development Methodology for AI Agents-based Teamscited by 12
  16. 2025LLM CHESS: Benchmarking Reasoning and Instruction-Following in LLMs through Chesscited by 12
  17. 2025Towards Responsible and Explainable AI Agents with Consensus-Driven Reasoningcited by 12
  18. 2024Measuring Free-Form Decision-Making Inconsistency of Language Models in Military Crisis Simulationscited by 11
  19. 2025Autonomous Agents for Scientific Discovery: Orchestrating Scientists, Language, Code, and Physicscited by 11
  20. 2025Standardization of Psychiatric Diagnoses -- Role of Fine-tuned LLM Consortium and OpenAI-gpt-oss Reasoning LLM Enabled Decision Support Systemcited by 11
  21. 2025Proof-of-TBI -- Fine-Tuned Vision Language Model Consortium and OpenAI-o3 Reasoning LLM-Based Medical Diagnosis Support System for Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Predictioncited by 10
  22. 2025When Do Large Language Models Exhibit Unsolicited Deception?cited by 9
  23. 2025SocialMaze: A Benchmark for Evaluating and Enhancing Social Reasoning in Large Language Models in Complex Social Environmentscited by 9
  24. 2025Putnam-AXIOM: A Functional and Static Benchmark for Measuring Higher Level Mathematical Reasoning in LLMscited by 9
  25. 2025MR.Rec: Synergizing Memory and Reasoning for Personalized Recommendation Assistant with LLMscited by 9
  26. 2024Codenames as a Benchmark for Large Language Modelscited by 8
  27. 2025Graph-Augmented Reasoning: Evolving Step-by-Step Knowledge Graph Retrieval for LLM Reasoningcited by 8
  28. 2025Can Large Language Models Develop Strategic Reasoning? Post-training Insights from Learning Chesscited by 8
  29. 2025S-DAG: A Subject-Based Directed Acyclic Graph for Multi-Agent Heterogeneous Reasoningcited by 8
  30. 2024Large Model Strategic Thinking, Small Model Efficiency: Transferring Theory of Mind in Large Language Modelscited by 7
  31. 2024FLARE: Faithful Logic-Aided Reasoning and Explorationcited by 7
  32. 2025Playing games with Large language models: Randomness and strategycited by 7
  33. 2025Longer Context, Deeper Thinking: Uncovering the Role of Long-Context Ability in Reasoningcited by 7
  34. 2026One Model, All Roles: Multi-Turn, Multi-Agent Self-Play Reinforcement Learning for Conversational Social Intelligencecited by 7
  35. 2024The Cognitive Capabilities of Generative AI: A Comparative Analysis with Human Benchmarkscited by 6
  36. 2025Unveiling the Magic of Code Reasoning through Hypothesis Decomposition and Amendmentcited by 6
  37. 2026Evaluating Collective Behaviour of Hundreds of LLM Agentscited by 6
  38. 2024Enhancing Language Model Rationality with Bi-Directional Deliberation Reasoningcited by 5

50 most cited of 97 All 97 (JSON)

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  1. 2026Beyond Scaling: Assessing Strategic Reasoning and Rapid Decision-Making Capability of LLMs in Zero-sum Environments
  2. 2024STRIDE: A Tool-Assisted LLM Agent Framework for Strategic and Interactive Decision-Making
  3. 2026Foresight Optimization for Strategic Reasoning in Large Language Models
  4. 2026Multi-Agent Strategic Games with LLMs
  5. 2024GameBench: Evaluating Strategic Reasoning Abilities of LLM Agents
  6. 2025Game Reasoning Arena: A Framework and Benchmark for Assessing Reasoning Capabilities of Large Language Models via Game Play
  7. 2026Reasoning Capabilities of Large Language Models. Lessons Learned from General Game Playing
  8. 2026MINDGAMES: A Live Arena for Evaluating Social and Strategic Reasoning in Multi-Agent LLMs