mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Offline Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning via Sequential Score Decomposition

arXiv 2505.05968 ↗First posted 9 May 2025cs.LG cs.MAcited by 4

On the map: Offline RL and imitation learning from data → Offline multi-agent RL

Abstract (arXiv)

Offline cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) faces unique challenges due to distributional shifts, particularly stemming from the high dimensionality of joint action spaces and the presence of out-of-distribution joint action selections. In this work, we highlight that a fundamental challenge in offline MARL arises from the multi-equilibrium nature of cooperative tasks, which induces a highly multimodal joint behavior policy space coupled with heterogeneous-quality behavior data. This makes it difficult for individual policy regularization to align with a consistent coordination pattern, leading to the policy distribution shift problems. To tackle this challenge, we design a sequential score function decomposition method that distills per-agent regularization signals from the joint behavior policy, which induces coordinated modality selection under decentralized execution constraints. Then we leverage a flexible diffusion-based generative model to learn these score functions from multimodal offline data, and integrate them into joint-action critics to guide policy updates toward high-reward, in-distribution regions under a shared team reward. Our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance across multiple particle environments and Multi-agent MuJoCo benchmarks consistently. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to explicitly address the distributional gap between offline and online MARL, paving the way for more generalizable offline policy-based MARL methods.

Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Offline multi-agent RL, one of 13 directions in Offline RL and imitation learning from data. Builds on 53 of its 66 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 May 2025.

Builds on

53 of 66 references.

Closest ancestors · 15

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning via In-Sample Sequential Policy Optimization10 Dec
  2. 2024ComaDICE: Offline Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Stationary Distribution Shift Regularization2 Oct
  3. 2024Putting Data at the Centre of Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning18 Sep
  4. 2024Coordination Failure in Cooperative Offline MARL1 Jul
  5. 2024Dispelling the Mirage of Progress in Offline MARL through Standardised Baselines and Evaluation13 Jun
  6. 2023MACCA: Offline Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning with Causal Credit Assignment6 Dec
  7. 2023AlberDICE: Addressing Out-Of-Distribution Joint Actions in Offline Multi-Agent RL via Alternating Stationary Distribution Correction Estimation3 Nov
  8. 2023Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Global-to-Local Value Regularization21 Jul
  9. 2023Improving Generalization and Data Efficiency with Diffusion in Offline Multi-agent RL4 Jul
  10. 2023MADiff: Offline Multi-agent Learning with Diffusion Models27 May
  11. 2023A Model-Based Solution to the Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Coordination Problem26 May
  12. 2022Learning from Good Trajectories in Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning28 Nov
3 more
  1. 2021Offline Pre-trained Multi-Agent Decision Transformer: One Big Sequence Model Tackles All SMAC Tasks6 Dec
  2. 2021Plan Better Amid Conservatism: Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Actor Rectification22 Nov
  3. 2021Believe What You See: Implicit Constraint Approach for Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning7 Jun

Other references · 38

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  2. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 8,964
  3. 2015Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamicscited by 7,005
  4. 2019Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distributioncited by 4,067
  5. 2020Offline Reinforcement Learning: Tutorial, Review, and Perspectives on Open Problemscited by 1,873
  6. 2017Multi-Agent Actor-Critic for Mixed Cooperative-Competitive Environmentscited by 1,519
  7. 2021Offline Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Q-Learningcited by 1,245
  8. 2019Dota 2 with Large Scale Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,084
  9. 2018QMIX: Monotonic Value Function Factorisation for Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 697
  10. 2017Masked Autoregressive Flow for Density Estimationcited by 680
  11. 2019Behavior Regularized Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 654
  12. 2020AWAC: Accelerating Online Reinforcement Learning with Offline Datasetscited by 647
26 more
  1. 2019Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: A Selective Overview of Theories and Algorithmscited by 555
  2. 2022Diffusion Policies as an Expressive Policy Class for Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 543
  3. 2020Monotonic Value Function Factorisation for Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 475
  4. 2023IDQL: Implicit Q-Learning as an Actor-Critic Method with Diffusion Policiescited by 307
  5. 2018Actor-Attention-Critic for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 259
  6. 2016A Kernelized Stein Discrepancy for Goodness-of-fit Tests and Model Evaluationcited by 236
  7. 2022A Survey on Offline Reinforcement Learning: Taxonomy, Review, and Open Problemscited by 228
  8. 2013The Complexity of Decentralized Control of Markov Decision Processescited by 225
  9. 2017Learning with Opponent-Learning Awarenesscited by 218
  10. 2021Trust Region Policy Optimisation in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 180
  11. 2020FACMAC: Factored Multi-Agent Centralised Policy Gradientscited by 178
  12. 2022Offline Reinforcement Learning via High-Fidelity Generative Behavior Modelingcited by 177
  13. 2022Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning is a Sequence Modeling Problemcited by 153
  14. 2023Efficient Diffusion Policies for Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 151
  15. 2022CORL: Research-oriented Deep Offline Reinforcement Learning Librarycited by 117
  16. 2023Consistency Models as a Rich and Efficient Policy Class for Reinforcement Learningcited by 93
  17. 2020Game-Theoretic Multiagent Reinforcement Learningcited by 92
  18. 2020The AI Economist: Improving Equality and Productivity with AI-Driven Tax Policiescited by 75
  19. 2023Score Regularized Policy Optimization through Diffusion Behaviorcited by 67
  20. 2024Diffusion-DICE: In-Sample Diffusion Guidance for Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 42
  21. 2021Offline Decentralized Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 32
  22. 2023Order Matters: Agent-by-agent Policy Optimizationcited by 24
  23. 2021Model-Based Opponent Modelingcited by 21
  24. 2020PowerNet: Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for Scalable Powergrid Controlcited by 13
  25. 2019Arena: A General Evaluation Platform and Building Toolkit for Multi-Agent Intelligencecited by 9
  26. 2024Select to Perfect: Imitating desired behavior from large multi-agent datacited by 4

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 2.

4 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Puzzle it Out: Local-to-Global World Model for Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
  2. 2026Sim2O: Efficient Offline-to-Online MARL via Joint Action Composition
  3. 2024Exploiting Structure in Offline Multi-Agent RL: The Benefits of Low Interaction Rank
  4. 2026CODA: Coordination via On-Policy Diffusion for Multi-Agent Offline Reinforcement Learning
  5. 2026Test-time Multi-agent Coordination by Decomposed Value Gradient Flow
  6. 2025OM2P: Offline Multi-Agent Mean-Flow Policy
  7. 2026A Recipe for Stable Offline Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning
  8. 2025Partial Action Replacement: Tackling Distribution Shift in Offline MARL