The Effects of Fixed-Strategy Agents on Local Convention Emergence in Multi-agent Systems

Achieving coordination in multi-agent systems has previously been found to be possible by utilizing local conventions as opposed to relying on the emergence of global conventions. On another note, fixed-strategy agents have been researched to manipulate the behaviour of networks with global conventions, but not local conventions. This paper studies how fixed-strategy agents impact local convention emergence and if they could be useful for both compact and loose community structures. It is shown that while the existence of a larger number of fixed-strategy agents generally makes local conventions emerge faster, only a few fixed-strategy agents are needed to convince communities to use their fixed action. Finally, fixed-strategy agents are helpful for compact community networks but not for loose community networks.