Evolution in Minority Games II. Games with Variable Strategy Spaces

Abstract

We continue our study of evolution in minority games by examining games in which agents with poorly performing strategies can trade in their strategies for new ones from a different strategy space. In the context of the games discussed in this paper, this means allowing for strategies that use information from different numbers of time lags, m. We find, in all the games we study, that after evolution, wealth per agent is high for agents with strategies drawn from small strategy spaces (small m), and low for agents with strategies drawn from large strategy spaces (large m). In the game played with N agents, wealth per agent as a function of m is very nearly a step function. The transition is at m=mt, where mt~mc-1. Here mc is the critical value of m at which N agents playing the game with a fixed strategy space (fixed m) have the best emergent coordination and the best utilization of resources. We also find that overall system-wide utilization of resources is independent of N. Furthermore, although overall system-wide utilization of resources after evolution varies somewhat depending on some other aspects of the evolutionary dynamics, in the best cases, utilization of resources is on the order of the best results achieved in evolutionary games with fixed strategy spaces. Simple explanations are presented for some of our main results.