I've been playing AGOT (6 players), and the impression I had at first has grown stronger. Let me detail:

-At first people rush for empty space, except maybe greyjoy, when he feels like he wants to hit lannister.

-Then nothing happen, everybody defends, cause it's too expensive to attack.

-At some point, someone thinks he can make a push to victory. He either manages a bubble victory, aka complete the n castles objectives just before being wiped from the board by other players coalition, or gets screwed, loses most of his possessions, and somebody else becomes the new major enemy.

I'm dissatisfied by both turtling and bubble victories. Are we playing it wrong? Do you have suggestions, rule mods, tactics? I think that 6 players makes the situation even worse, as far as bubble victory is concerned.

I have to deal with the same thing. Most people are set in their Risk ways and get defensive quickly. The way I go about fixing the problem is beating someone back so they're either forced to attack someone or they get an ally to attack me. Having a truce with a neighbour also gets things moving quickly when people start hanging back because their neighbour now has only one way to expand. Plus there's always backstabbing.

If you can't make your players more agressive try giving everyone paper and a pencil (or laptops, but that's just wrong when you're playing a medieval game). Then you start making deals with everyone, pass on strategies to take your enemy from behind, plan backstabs, and bribe other players. Or give them dirty limricks to throw off the other players so they think you've concocted a diabolical plan and have them trip over themselves trying to figure out your plan. There's less commision this way and you'll avoid well-founded accussations of ganging up on someone, which usual gets people to lay off or get ganged up on themselves much like you pointed out.

The problem for me is not the scheming. I've got some pretty vicious players here. It's just that most of the time there is no real reward to offence.

I wonder how a system of objectives/Victory Points would work to fix that passivity.

I'm not really sure what you mean. Even if I don't increase my supply by taking a barrel it will weaken the other player and give me a buffer. And technically the cities are your victory points. I suppose you could have two tier cities count for two so you only need about 5 single tier or two two tiers and a single to win the game. That way the game would go too fast for stalemates.

And as a sidenote, weighing an attack is part of any real war game. It's not like video games where you just destroy everything in your path. And if there are no golden opportunities, make them. You can't always wait for someone else to make the first move.

I honestly don't understand how you can play what you call boring games like these !

I have the chance to play with 2-3 different groups of players and, in each one of them, the game is different. One of my group is more combat based playing (we cycle something like 2 times our hands of house cards), in the other one, people talk and talk and talk until one, who outalked them all, seizes an opportunity for a victory (usually, playing 1 or 2 combats only). But, in all these games, when people start being too defensive, I see that as an opportunity for me since they are not growing. It is true you can be quite defensive in this game but, if you have at least one area in which nobody pass, you cannot protect all the territories adjacent to the ennemy. I don't know how it happens in your group but in mines, when most players decide to be more defensive, I cut deals (sometimes offering them even one of my city) so they can overexpand and get eaten by the rest of the wolves. And when the smoke clears, all my opponents are weakened and I seize the day!