Definition of Strategies

In order to achieve flexible agent behaviour, we have to conceive about the way the agents would be designing their own strategies. Some part of the literature (D2.1) refer to strategy as being a mapping from the current state to a current action for the agent. If this is an ideal manner to design the implementation, then the modellers have to provide a list of actions or functions that are applicable in one state of an agent. There would also be a separate selection procedure which would allow these agents to choose between these actions.

Another manner might be taking the hierarchical approach, where a defined task may be divided into smaller units or targets which have to be done to reach the ultimate goal. The agent could then choose between these small tasks to achieve its goal.

The question currently on my mind is, if we were to follow the above approach would a strategy be confined to every particular state or should a strategy be equivalent to the function map, which would include all the roles the agent has and all its functions and how these would be arranged accordingly to achieve maximum profit for itself for every iteration.

This would allow the agents to review their day to day activities, and possibly evolve their behaviour from the old practices into easier ways of performing activities. Also show what the agents would do if some exogenous shocks are introduced into the system.

The key we would target for: modellers should basically give the basic functions the agents can do, the agents would then use this information and looking at what is advantageous to them change or optimize their behaviour. Remember to consider the problem of time activation for some of the agents.