A hybrid search agent in Pommerman

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the possibility of search-based agents in games with resource-intensive forward models. We implemented a player agent in the Pommerman framework and put it against the baseline agent to measure its performance. We implemented a heuristic agent and improved it by enabling depth-limited tree search in specific gameplay moments. We also compared different node selection methods during depth-limited tree search. Our result shows that depth-limited tree search is still viable when presented with inefficient forward models and exploitation-driven selection method is the most efficient in this specific domain.