Carcassone can, indeed, be played very aggressively. You can "steal" another person's cities, roads or fields by letting three such merge (and have men on two of them) and you can tie up another players men by making it difficult or impossible to complete a city or road, as Michael described.
But in most cases there is a choice between adding points to your own score and making it difficult for an opponent. If there are more than two players in the game, you need to take more points from your opponent than you would have gained on your own, so I'm not sure it unless you have no good use (for yourself) for the tile you draw or if you have many unassigned men and your opponents very few. If you can tie up the last of your opponents men and still have one or two, you will clearly win (unless they already are far ahead). Few games are dominated by such tactics, but I usually see a few instances in most games. If the possibility wasn't there, the game would be far less exciting, as player interaction would be very low.
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