We study the problem of computing approximate Nash equilibria (epsilon-Nash equilibria) in normal form games, where the number of players is a small constant. We consider the approach of looking for solutions with constant support size. It is known from recent work that in the 2-player case, a 1/2-Nash equilibrium can be easily found, but in general one cannot achieve a smaller value of epsilon than 1/2. In this paper we extend those results to the k-player case, and find that epsilon = 1-1/k is feasible, but cannot be improved upon. We show how stronger results for the 2-player case may be used in order to slightly improve upon the epsilon = 1-1/k obtained in the k-player case.
Two-player games on graphs provide the theoretical frame- work for many important problems such as reactive synthesis. While the traditional study of two-player zero-sum games has been extended to multi-player games with several notions of equilibria, they are decidable only for perfect-information games, whereas several applications require imperfect-information games. In this paper we propose a new notion of equilibria, called doomsday equilibria, which is a strategy profile such that all players satisfy their own objective, and if any coalition of players deviates and violates even one of t…
Computing an equilibrium in congestion games can be challenging when the number of players is large. Yet, it is a problem to be addressed in practice, for instance to forecast the state of the system and be able to control it. In this work, we analyze the case of generalized atomic congestion games, with coupling constraints, and with players that are heterogeneous through their action sets and their utility functions. We obtain an approximation of the variational Nash equilibria---a notion generalizing Nash equilibria in the presence of coupling constraints---of a large atomic congestion game…
We discuss and solve a model for a game with many players, where a subset of truely deciding players is embedded into a hierarchy of dependent agents. These interdependencies modify the game matrix and the Nash equilibria for the deciding players. In a concrete example, we recognize the partition function of the Ising model and for high dependency we observe a phase transition to a new Nash equilibrium, which is the Pareto-efficient outcome. An example we have in mind is the game theory for major shareholders in a stock market, where intermediate companies decide according to a majority vote o…
We study the existence of mixed-strategy equilibria in concurrent games played on graphs. While existence is guaranteed with safety objectives for each player, Nash equilibria need not exist when players are given arbitrary terminal-reward objectives, and their existence is undecidable with qualitative reachability objectives (and only three players). However, these results rely on the fact that the players can enforce infinite plays while trying to improve their payoffs. In this paper, we introduce a relaxed notion of equilibria, where deviations are imprecise. We prove that contrary to Nash …
This paper is an exposition of algorithms for finding one or all equilibria of a bimatrix game (a two-player game in strategic form) in the style of a chapter in a graduate textbook. Using labeled "best-response polytopes", we present the Lemke-Howson algorithm that finds one equilibrium. We show that the path followed by this algorithm has a direction, and that the endpoints of the path have opposite index, in a canonical way using determinants. For reference, we prove that a number of notions of nondegeneracy of a bimatrix game are equivalent. The computation of all equilibria of a general b…
In this work we apply methods from cryptography to enable any number of mutually distrusting players to implement broad classes of mediated equilibria of strategic games without the need for trusted mediation. Our implementation makes use of a (standard) pre-play "cheap talk" phase, in which players engage in free and non-binding communication prior to playing in the original game. In our cheap talk phase, the players execute a secure multi-party computation protocol to sample an action profile from an equilibrium of a "cryptographically blinded" version of the original game, in which actions …
We study multiplayer reachability games played on a finite directed graph equipped with target sets, one for each player. In those reachability games, it is known that there always exists a Nash equilibrium (NE) and a subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE). But sometimes several equilibria may coexist such that in one equilibrium no player reaches his target set whereas in another one several players reach it. It is thus very natural to identify "relevant" equilibria. In this paper, we consider different notions of relevant equilibria including Pareto optimal equilibria and equilibria with high soc…
We study optimal equilibria in multi-player games. An equilibrium is optimal for a player, if her payoff is maximal. A tempting approach to solving this problem is to seek optimal Nash equilibria, the standard form of equilibria where no player has an incentive to deviate from her strategy. We argue that a player with the power to define an equilibrium is in a position, where she should not be interested in the symmetry of a Nash equilibrium, and ignore the question of whether or not her outcome can be improved if the other strategies are fixed. That is, she would only have to make sure that t…
We introduce the notion of exchangeable equilibria of a symmetric bimatrix game, defined as those correlated equilibria in which players' strategy choices are conditionally independently and identically distributed given some hidden variable. We give several game-theoretic interpretations and a version of the "revelation principle". Geometrically, the set of exchangeable equilibria is convex and lies between the symmetric Nash equilibria and the symmetric correlated equilibria. Exchangeable equilibria can achieve higher expected utility than symmetric Nash equilibria.
We prove that in a normal form n-player game with m actions for each player, there exists an approximate Nash equilibrium where each player randomizes uniformly among a set of O(log(m) + log(n)) pure strategies. This result induces an $N^{\log \log N}$ algorithm for computing an approximate Nash equilibrium in games where the number of actions is polynomial in the number of players (m=poly(n)), where $N=nm^n$ is the size of the game (the input size). In addition, we establish an inverse connection between the entropy of Nash equilibria in the game, and the time it takes to find such an approxi…
This paper studies the existence of pure Nash equilibria in resource graph games, which are a general class of strategic games used to succinctly represent the players' private costs. There is a finite set of resources and the strategy set of each player corresponds to a set of subsets of resources. The cost of a resource is an arbitrary function that depends on the load vector of the resources in a specified neighborhood. As our main result, we give complete characterizations of the cost functions guaranteeing the existence of pure Nash equilibria for weighted and unweighted players, respecti…
In this paper we extend a popular non-cooperative network creation game (NCG) to allow for disconnected equilibrium networks. There are n players, each is a vertex in a graph, and a strategy is a subset of players to build edges to. For each edge a player must pay a cost α, and the individual cost for a player represents a trade-off between edge costs and shortest path lengths to all other players. We extend the model to a penalized game (PCG), for which we reduce the penalty counted towards the individual cost for a pair of disconnected players to a finite value β. Our analysis concentrates o…
We prove that differential Nash equilibria are generic amongst local Nash equilibria in continuous zero-sum games. That is, there exists an open-dense subset of zero-sum games for which local Nash equilibria are non-degenerate differential Nash equilibria. The result extends previous results to the zero-sum setting, where we obtain even stronger results; in particular, we show that local Nash equilibria are generically hyperbolic critical points. We further show that differential Nash equilibria of zero-sum games are structurally stable. The purpose for presenting these extensions is the recen…
We introduce and study incentive equilibria for multi-player meanpayoff games. Incentive equilibria generalise well-studied solution concepts such as Nash equilibria and leader equilibria (also known as Stackelberg equilibria). Recall that a strategy profile is a Nash equilibrium if no player can improve his payoff by changing his strategy unilaterally. In the setting of incentive and leader equilibria, there is a distinguished player called the leader who can assign strategies to all other players, referred to as her followers. A strategy profile is a leader strategy profile if no player, exc…
We prove that every repeated game with countably many players, finite action sets, and tail-measurable payoffs admits an $ε$-equilibrium, for every $ε> 0$.
The rank of a bimatrix game (A,B) is the rank of the matrix A+B. We give a construction of rank-1 games with exponentially many equilibria, which answers an open problem by Kannan and Theobald (2010).
In this paper, we study turn-based quantitative multiplayer non zero-sum games played on finite graphs with both reachability and safety objectives. In this framework a player with a reachability objective aims at reaching his own goal as soon as possible, whereas a player with a safety objective aims at avoiding his bad set or, if impossible, delaying its visit as long as possible. We prove the existence of Nash equilibria with finite memory in quantitative multiplayer reachability/safety games. Moreover, we prove the existence of finite-memory secure equilibria for quantitative two-player re…
We consider polymatrix coordination games with individual preferences where every player corresponds to a node in a graph who plays with each neighbor a separate bimatrix game with non-negative symmetric payoffs. In this paper, we study $α$-approximate $k$-equilibria of these games, i.e., outcomes where no group of at most $k$ players can deviate such that each member increases his payoff by at least a factor $α$. We prove that for $α\ge 2$ these games have the finite coalitional improvement property (and thus $α$-approximate $k$-equilibria exist), while for $α< 2$ this property does not hold.…
We study the problem of finding robust equilibria in multiplayer concurrent games with mean payoff objectives. A $(k,t)$-robust equilibrium is a strategy profile such that no coalition of size $k$ can improve the payoff of one its member by deviating, and no coalition of size $t$ can decrease the payoff of other players. We are interested in pure equilibria, that is, solutions that can be implemented using non-randomized strategies. We suggest a general transformation from multiplayer games to two-player games such that pure equilibria in the first game correspond to winning strategies in the …
We investigate the degree of discontinuity of several solution concepts from non-cooperative game theory. While the consideration of Nash equilibria forms the core of our work, also pure and correlated equilibria are dealt with. Formally, we restrict the treatment to two player games, but results and proofs extend to the n-player case. As a side result, the degree of discontinuity of solving systems of linear inequalities is settled.
In \emph{bandwidth allocation games} (BAGs), the strategy of a player consists of various demands on different resources. The player's utility is at most the sum of these demands, provided they are fully satisfied. Every resource has a limited capacity and if it is exceeded by the total demand, it has to be split between the players. Since these games generally do not have pure Nash equilibria, we consider approximate pure Nash equilibria, in which no player can improve her utility by more than some fixed factor $α$ through unilateral strategy changes. There is a threshold $α_δ$ (where $δ$ is …
We study a program game version of the Prisoner's Dilemma, i.e., a two-player game in which each player submits a computer program, the programs are given read access to each other's source code and then choose whether to cooperate or defect. Prior work has introduced various programs that form cooperative equilibria against themselves in this game. For example, the $ε$-grounded Fair Bot cooperates with probability $ε$ and with the remaining probability runs its opponent's program and copies its action. If both players submit this program, then this is a Nash equilibrium in which both players …
The problem of the existence of Berge equilibria in the sense of Zhukovskii in normal form finite games in pure and in mixed strategies is studied. The example of a three-player game that has Berge equilibrium neither in pure nor in mixed strategies is given.
Nearly a decade ago, Azrieli and Shmaya introduced the class of $λ$-Lipschitz games in which every player's payoff function is $λ$-Lipschitz with respect to the actions of the other players. They showed that such games admit $ε$-approximate pure Nash equilibria for certain settings of $ε$ and $λ$. They left open, however, the question of how hard it is to find such an equilibrium. In this work, we develop a query-efficient reduction from more general games to Lipschitz games. We use this reduction to show a query lower bound for any randomized algorithm finding $ε$-approximate pure Nash equili…
We tackle a fundamental problem in empirical game-theoretic analysis (EGTA), that of learning equilibria of simulation-based games. Such games cannot be described in analytical form; instead, a black-box simulator can be queried to obtain noisy samples of utilities. Our approach to EGTA is in the spirit of probably approximately correct learning. We design algorithms that learn so-called empirical games, which uniformly approximate the utilities of simulation-based games with finite-sample guarantees. These algorithms can be instantiated with various concentration inequalities. Building on ear…
We study the problem of computing approximate Nash equilibria of bimatrix games, in a setting where players initially know their own payoffs but not the payoffs of the other player. In order for a solution of reasonable quality to be found, some amount of communication needs to take place between the players. We are interested in algorithms where the communication is substantially less than the contents of a payoff matrix, for example logarithmic in the size of the matrix. When the communication is polylogarithmic in the number of strategies n, we show how to obtain epsilon-approximate Nash eq…
In this short note we study a class of multi-player, turn-based games with deterministic state transitions and reachability / safety objectives (this class contains as special cases "classic" two-player reachability and safety games as well as multi-player "stay--in-a-set" and "reach-a-set" games). Quantitative and qualitative versions of the objectives are presented and for both cases we prove the existence of a deterministic and memoryless Nash equilibrium; the proof is short and simple, using only Fink's classic result about the existence of Nash equilibria for multi-player discounted stoch…
In an $ε$-Nash equilibrium, a player can gain at most $ε$ by unilaterally changing his behaviour. For two-player (bimatrix) games with payoffs in $[0,1]$, the best-known$ε$ achievable in polynomial time is 0.3393. In general, for $n$-player games an $ε$-Nash equilibrium can be computed in polynomial time for an $ε$ that is an increasing function of $n$ but does not depend on the number of strategies of the players. For three-player and four-player games the corresponding values of $ε$ are 0.6022 and 0.7153, respectively. Polymatrix games are a restriction of general $n$-player games where a pl…
We study pure Nash equilibria in infinite-duration games on graphs, with partial visibility of actions but communication (based on a graph) among the players. We show that a simple communication mechanism consisting in reporting the deviator when seeing it and propagating this information is sufficient for characterizing Nash equilibria. We propose an epistemic game construction, which conveniently records important information about the knowledge of the players. With this abstraction, we are able to characterize Nash equilibria which follow the simple communication pattern via winning strateg…
An heuristic approach to compute strong Nash (Aumann) equilibria is presented. The method is based on differential evolution and three variants of a generative relation for strong Nash equilibria characterization. Numerical experiments performed on the minimum effort game for up to 150 players illustrate the efficiency of the approach. The advantages and disadvantages of each variant is discussed in terms of precision and running time.
We develop a quasi-polynomial time Las Vegas algorithm for approximating Nash equilibria in polymatrix games over trees, under a mild renormalizing assumption. Our result, in particular, leads to an expected polynomial-time algorithm for computing approximate Nash equilibria of tree polymatrix games in which the number of actions per player is a fixed constant. Further, for trees with constant degree, the running time of the algorithm matches the best known upper bound for approximating Nash equilibria in bimatrix games (Lipton, Markakis, and Mehta 2003). Notably, this work closely complements…
It is known that the set of all correlated equilibria of an n-player non-cooperative game is a convex polytope and includes all the Nash equilibria. Further, the Nash equilibria all lie on the boundary of this polytope. We study the geometry of both these equilibrium notions when the players have cumulative prospect theoretic (CPT) preferences. The set of CPT correlated equilibria includes all the CPT Nash equilibria but it need not be a convex polytope. We show that it can, in fact, be disconnected. However, all the CPT Nash equilibria continue to lie on its boundary. We also characterize the…
A group of players which contain n sellers and n buyers bargain over the partitions of n pies. A seller(/buyer) has to reach an agreement with a buyer (/seller) on the division of a pie. The players bargain in a system like the stock market: each seller(buyer) can either offer a selling(buying) price to all buyers(sellers) or accept a price offered by another buyer(seller). The offered prices are known to all. Once a player accepts a price offered by another one, the division of a pie between them is determined. Each player has a constant discounting factor and the discounting factors of all p…
We propose a formulation of a general-sum bimatrix game as a bipartite directed graph with the objective of establishing a correspondence between the set of the relevant structures of the graph (in particular elementary cycles) and the set of the Nash equilibria of the game. We show that finding the set of elementary cycles of the graph permits the computation of the set of equilibria. For games whose graphs have a sparse adjacency matrix, this serves as a good heuristic for computing the set of equilibria. The heuristic also allows the discarding of sections of the support space that do not y…
We study multiplayer turn-based timed games with reachability objectives. In particular, we are interested in the notion of subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE). We prove that deciding the constrained existence of an SPE in this setting is EXPTIME-complete.
We show that the problem of finding an ε-approximate Nash equilibrium in an anonymous game with seven pure strategies is complete in PPAD, when the approximation parameter ε is exponentially small in the number of players.
In this paper we describe several player preferences in games with $N \geq 2$ players, in particular the case $N = 3$, and use them to simplify game trees, using the game of Clobber as our example. We show that, using a fixed starting player and a certain ruleset, any short game can be simplified to a value in a very concise set. Omitting the fixed starting player and generalising the theory to more than 3 players remains a challenge.
We introduce set packing games as an abstraction of situations in which $n$ selfish players select subsets of a finite set of indivisible items, and analyze the quality of several equilibria for this class of games. Assuming that players are able to approximately play equilibrium strategies, we show that the total quality of the resulting equilibrium solutions is only moderately suboptimal. Our results are tight bounds on the price of anarchy for three equilibrium concepts, namely Nash equilibria, subgame perfect equilibria, and an equilibrium concept that we refer to as $k$-collusion Nash equ…
In this note we provide a new proof for the results of Lipton et al. on the existence of an approximate Nash equilibrium with logarithmic support size. Besides its simplicity, the new proof leads to the following contributions: 1. For n-player games, we improve the bound on the size of the support of an approximate Nash equilibrium. 2. We generalize the result of Daskalakis and Papadimitriou on small probability games from the two-player case to the general n-player case. 3. We provide a logarithmic bound on the size of the support of an approximate Nash equilibrium in the case of graphical ga…
Two-player complete-information game trees are perhaps the simplest possible setting for studying general-sum games and the computational problem of finding equilibria. These games admit a simple bottom-up algorithm for finding subgame perfect Nash equilibria efficiently. However, such an algorithm can fail to identify optimal equilibria, such as those that maximize social welfare. The reason is that, counterintuitively, probabilistic action choices are sometimes needed to achieve maximum payoffs. We provide a novel polynomial-time algorithm for this problem that explicitly reasons about stoch…
In this paper, we consider the problem of wireless power control in an interference channel where transmitters aim to maximize their own benefit. When the individual payoff or utility function is derived from the transmission efficiency and the spent power, previous works typically study the Nash equilibrium of the resulting power control game. We propose to introduce concepts of correlated and communication equilibria from game theory to find efficient solutions (compared to the Nash equilibrium) for this problem. Communication and correlated equilibria are analyzed for the power control game…
We investigate the complexity of bounding the uncertainty of graphical games, and we provide new insight into the intrinsic difficulty of computing Nash equilibria. In particular, we show that, if one adds very simple and natural additional requirements to a graphical game, the existence of Nash equilibria is no longer guaranteed, and computing an equilibrium is an intractable problem. Moreover, if stronger equilibrium conditions are required for the game, we get hardness results for the second level of the polynomial hierarchy. Our results offer a clear picture of the complexity of mixed Nash…
The Colonel Blotto Problem proposed by Borel in 1921 has served as a widely applicable model of budget-constrained simultaneous winner-take-all competitions in the social sciences. Applications include elections, advertising, R&D and more. However, the classic Blotto problem and variants limit the study to competitions over a finite set of discrete battlefields. In this paper, we extend the classical theory to study multiplayer Blotto games over arbitrary measurable battlegrounds, provide an algorithm to efficiently sample equilibria of symmetric "equipartionable" Generalized Blotto games, and…
We study the problem of checking for the existence of constrained pure Nash equilibria in a subclass of polymatrix games defined on weighted directed graphs. The payoff of a player is defined as the sum of nonnegative rational weights on incoming edges from players who picked the same strategy augmented by a fixed integer bonus for picking a given strategy. These games capture the idea of coordination within a local neighbourhood in the absence of globally common strategies. We study the decision problem of checking whether a given set of strategy choices for a subset of the players is consist…
We present several new characterizations of correlated equilibria in games with continuous utility functions. These have the advantage of being more computationally and analytically tractable than the standard definition in terms of departure functions. We use these characterizations to construct effective algorithms for approximating a single correlated equilibrium or the entire set of correlated equilibria of a game with polynomial utility functions.
While there have been a number of studies about the efficacy of methods to find exact Nash equilibria in bimatrix games, there has been little empirical work on finding approximate Nash equilibria. Here we provide such a study that compares a number of approximation methods and exact methods. In particular, we explore the trade-off between the quality of approximate equilibrium and the required running time to find one. We found that the existing library GAMUT, which has been the de facto standard that has been used to test exact methods, is insufficient as a test bed for approximation methods…
Under certain assumptions in terms of information and models, equilibria correspond to possible stable outcomes in conflicting or cooperative scenarios where rational entities interact. For wireless engineers, it is of paramount importance to be able to predict and even ensure such states at which the network will effectively operate. In this article, we provide non-exhaustive methodologies for characterizing equilibria in wireless games in terms of existence, uniqueness, selection, and efficiency.
Structured game representations have recently attracted interest as models for multi-agent artificial intelligence scenarios, with rational behavior most commonly characterized by Nash equilibria. This paper presents efficient, exact algorithms for computing Nash equilibria in structured game representations, including both graphical games and multi-agent influence diagrams (MAIDs). The algorithms are derived from a continuation method for normal-form and extensive-form games due to Govindan and Wilson; they follow a trajectory through a space of perturbed games and their equilibria, exploitin…
Quitting games are one of the simplest stochastic games in which at any stage each player has only two possible actions, continue and quit. The game ends as soon as at least one player chooses to quit. The players then receive a payoff, which depends on the set of players that did choose to quit. If the game never ends, the payoff to each player is zero. For analysis of quitting games the so called one-step games are used. Important properties of the expected payoff and of equilibria in one-step games are stated. Furthermore some relations between equilibria in one-step games and equilibria in…
We study pure-strategy Nash equilibria in multi-player concurrent deterministic games, for a variety of preference relations. We provide a novel construction, called the suspect game, which transforms a multi-player concurrent game into a two-player turn-based game which turns Nash equilibria into winning strategies (for some objective that depends on the preference relations of the players in the original game). We use that transformation to design algorithms for computing Nash equilibria in finite games, which in most cases have optimal worst-case complexity, for large classes of preference …
We prove that computing a Nash equilibrium of a two-player ($n \times n$) game with payoffs in $[-1,1]$ is PPAD-hard (under randomized reductions) even in the smoothed analysis setting, smoothing with noise of constant magnitude. This gives a strong negative answer to conjectures of Spielman and Teng [ST06] and Cheng, Deng, and Teng [CDT09]. In contrast to prior work proving PPAD-hardness after smoothing by noise of magnitude $1/\operatorname{poly}(n)$ [CDT09], our smoothed complexity result is not proved via hardness of approximation for Nash equilibria. This is by necessity, since Nash equil…
