Generative Evolutionary Meta-Solver (GEMS): Scalable Surrogate-Free Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sharma, Alakh, Trivedi, Gaurish, Bhandari, Kartikey Singh, Sinha, Yash, Kumar, Dhruv, Narang, Pratik, Challa, Jagat Sesh
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Sharma, Alakh
Trivedi, Gaurish
Bhandari, Kartikey Singh
Sinha, Yash
Kumar, Dhruv
Narang, Pratik
Challa, Jagat Sesh
author_facet Sharma, Alakh
Trivedi, Gaurish
Bhandari, Kartikey Singh
Sinha, Yash
Kumar, Dhruv
Narang, Pratik
Challa, Jagat Sesh
contents Scalable multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) remains a central challenge for AI. Existing population-based methods, like Policy-Space Response Oracles, PSRO, require storing explicit policy populations and constructing full payoff matrices, incurring quadratic computation and linear memory costs. We present Generative Evolutionary Meta-Solver (GEMS), a surrogate-free framework that replaces explicit populations with a compact set of latent anchors and a single amortized generator. Instead of exhaustively constructing the payoff matrix, GEMS relies on unbiased Monte Carlo rollouts, multiplicative-weights meta-dynamics, and a model-free empirical-Bernstein UCB oracle to adaptively expand the policy set. Best responses are trained within the generator using an advantage-based trust-region objective, eliminating the need to store and train separate actors. We evaluated GEMS in a variety of Two-player and Multi-Player games such as the Deceptive Messages Game, Kuhn Poker and Multi-Particle environment. We find that GEMS is up to ~$\mathbf{6\times}$ faster, has $\mathbf{1.3\times}$ less memory usage than PSRO, while also reaps higher rewards simultaneously. These results demonstrate that GEMS retains the game theoretic guarantees of PSRO, while overcoming its fundamental inefficiencies, hence enabling scalable multi-agent learning in multiple domains.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_23462
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Generative Evolutionary Meta-Solver (GEMS): Scalable Surrogate-Free Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Sharma, Alakh
Trivedi, Gaurish
Bhandari, Kartikey Singh
Sinha, Yash
Kumar, Dhruv
Narang, Pratik
Challa, Jagat Sesh
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
68T05, 91A10
I.2.11; I.2.6
Scalable multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) remains a central challenge for AI. Existing population-based methods, like Policy-Space Response Oracles, PSRO, require storing explicit policy populations and constructing full payoff matrices, incurring quadratic computation and linear memory costs. We present Generative Evolutionary Meta-Solver (GEMS), a surrogate-free framework that replaces explicit populations with a compact set of latent anchors and a single amortized generator. Instead of exhaustively constructing the payoff matrix, GEMS relies on unbiased Monte Carlo rollouts, multiplicative-weights meta-dynamics, and a model-free empirical-Bernstein UCB oracle to adaptively expand the policy set. Best responses are trained within the generator using an advantage-based trust-region objective, eliminating the need to store and train separate actors. We evaluated GEMS in a variety of Two-player and Multi-Player games such as the Deceptive Messages Game, Kuhn Poker and Multi-Particle environment. We find that GEMS is up to ~$\mathbf{6\times}$ faster, has $\mathbf{1.3\times}$ less memory usage than PSRO, while also reaps higher rewards simultaneously. These results demonstrate that GEMS retains the game theoretic guarantees of PSRO, while overcoming its fundamental inefficiencies, hence enabling scalable multi-agent learning in multiple domains.
title Generative Evolutionary Meta-Solver (GEMS): Scalable Surrogate-Free Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
68T05, 91A10
I.2.11; I.2.6
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23462