Enhancing Video Games Policy Based on Least-Squares Continuous Action Policy Iteration: Case Study on StarCraft Brood War and Glest RTS Games and the 8 Queens Board Game

Abstract EN

With the rapid advent of video games recently and the increasing numbers of players and gamers, only a tough game with high policy, actions, and tactics survives.

How the game responds to opponent actions is the key issue of popular games.

Many algorithms were proposed to solve this problem such as Least-Squares Policy Iteration (LSPI) and State-Action-Reward-State-Action (SARSA) but they mainly depend on discrete actions, while agents in such a setting have to learn from the consequences of their continuous actions, in order to maximize the total reward over time.

So in this paper we proposed a new algorithm based on LSPI called Least-Squares Continuous Action Policy Iteration (LSCAPI).

The LSCAPI was implemented and tested on three different games: one board game, the 8 Queens, and two real-time strategy (RTS) games, StarCraft Brood War and Glest.

The LSCAPI evaluation proved superiority over LSPI in time, policy learning ability, and effectiveness.