title: How necessary are activation functions after dense layer in neural networks?
body: <p>I'm currently training multiple recurrent convolutional neural networks with deep q-learning for the first time. </p>
  
  <p>Input is a 11x11x1 matrix, each network consists of 4 convolutional layer with dimensions 3x3x16, 3x3x32, 3x3x64, 3x3x64. I use stride=1 and padding=1. Each convLayer is followed by ReLU activation. The output is fed into a feedforward fully-connected dense layer with 128 units and after that into an LSTM layer, also containing 128 units. Two following dense layer produce separate advantage and value steams. </p>
  
  <p>So training is running for a couple of days now and now I've realized (after I've read some related paper), I didn't add an activation function after the first dense layer (as in most of the papers). I wonder if adding one would significantly improve my network? Since I'm training the networks for university, I don't have unlimited time for training, because of a deadline for my work. However, I don't have enough experience in training neural networks, to decide on what to do...
  What do you suggest? I'm thankful for every answer!</p>