My point was to note that Banks's works are fiction, so the usefulness of citing outcomes in his fictional universe is very limited, because they're almost cert

My point was to note that Banks's works are fiction, so the usefulness of citing outcomes in his fictional universe is very limited, because they're almost certainly more of an expression of his biases than anything else (and IIRC, his biases could be cartoonish). The Culture basically had god (Banks) on its side, to ensure its victory, just like Skywalker had god (Lucas) on his side, who made it so the stormtroopers could never shoot straight when he was around. I bet Banks, consciously or unconsciously, played up the Culture's strengths, and played down the strengths of its adversaries (or engineered them with exploitable weaknesses).