mctx-az

This fork of google-deepmind/mctx introduces a new feature used in AlphaZero: continuing search from a subtree of a previous state's search output, or subtree persistence.

This allows Monte Carlo Tree Search to continue from an already-initialized, partially populated search tree. This lets work done in a previous call to Monte Carlo Tree Search persist to the next call, avoiding lots of repeated work!

Quickstart

mctx-az introduces a new policy: alphazero_policy which allows the user to pass a pre-initialized Tree to continue the search with.

Then, get_subtree can be used to extract the subtree rooted at a particular child node of the root, corresponding to a taken action.

In cases where the search tree should not be saved, such as an episdoe terminating, reset_search_tree can be used to clear the tree.

In order to initialize a new tree, pass tree=None, to alphazero_policy, along with max_nodes to specify the capacity of the tree, which in most cases should be >= num_simulations.

alphazero_policy otherwise functions exactly the same as muzero_policy.

Initializing a new Tree:

policy_output = mctx.alphazero_policy(params, rng_key, root, recurrent_fn,
                                      num_simulations=32, tree=None, max_nodes=48)
tree = policy_output.search_tree

Extracting the subtree and continuing search

# get chosen action from policy output
action = policy_output.action

# extract the subtree corresponding to the chosen action
tree = mctx.get_subtree(tree, action)

# go to next environment state
env_state = env.step(env_state, action)

# reset the search tree where the environment has terminated
tree = mctx.reset_search_tree(tree, env_state.terminated)

# new search with subtree
# (max_nodes has no effect when a tree is passed) 
policy_ouput = mctx.alphazero_policy(params, rng_key, root, recurrent_fn,
                                     num_simulations=32, tree=tree)

Note on out-of-bounds expansions:

A call to any mctx policy will expand num_simulations nodes (assuming max_depth is not breached).

Given that alphazero_policy accepts a pre-populated Tree, it is possible that there will not be enough room left for num_simulations new nodes.

In the case where a tree is full, values and visit counts are still propagated backwards to all nodes along the visit path as they would if the expansion was in bounds. However, a new node is not created and stored in the search tree, only its in-bounds predecessors are updated.

Examples

The mctx readme links to a simple Connect4 example: https://github.com/Carbon225/mctx-classic

I modified this example to demonstrate the use of alphazero_policy and get_subtree. You can see it here

Issues

If you run into problems or need help, please create an Issue and I will do my best to assist you promptly.