  Deep reinforcement learning has achieved great successes in recent years,
however, one main challenge is the sample inefficiency. In this paper, we focus
on how to use action guidance by means of a non-expert demonstrator to improve
sample efficiency in a domain with sparse, delayed, and possibly deceptive
rewards: the recently-proposed multi-agent benchmark of Pommerman. We propose a
new framework where even a non-expert simulated demonstrator, e.g., planning
algorithms such as Monte Carlo tree search with a small number rollouts, can be
integrated within asynchronous distributed deep reinforcement learning methods.
Compared to a vanilla deep RL algorithm, our proposed methods both learn faster
and converge to better policies on a two-player mini version of the Pommerman
game.
