Representational Sensitivity for Divide the Dollar Playing Agents

Divide the Dollar is a two-player simultaneous game derived from the bargaining game invented by John Nash. This game is interesting because its strategy space contains an entire subspace of Nash equilibria. The large number of moves in the game means that it is somewhat challenging to design agents to play the game. This study examines the problem of designing representations for divide the dollar playing agents and tests a number of representations. It was found that representation and resources allotted were significant factors affecting the agents' performance and that fitness and resources used appeared to be negatively correlated during evolution. This study places agents with different representations into direct competition and finds that there are representations with a strong competitive advantage. Both the choice of representation and the allocation of resources to that representation are found to impact the ability of agents to make bargains and to compete with one another.