Cooperate to Compete

Strategic Coordination in Multi-Agent Conquest

Most current multi-agent benchmarks test pure cooperation, pure competition, or structured bargaining. Cooperate to Compete (C2C) captures a more realistic interaction paradigm: agents with misaligned interests use negotiation as a tool to achieve individual goals. We design a mixed-motive environment where humans and AI must navigate both short-term cooperation and long-term competition. By studying both agents and humans in this environment, we analyze their behavioral differences and introduce interventions to evaluate how specific negotiation behaviors impact performance.

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