Access Level?

You do by contributing to the galciv universe from what I have been able to fathom. Most of the "Diplomat" or "Veteran" levels additionally have made themselves available from what I understand alot on SDC chat room giving help. Other qualifications seem to be ability to help understand what is going wrong in the coding area, especially if your a game developer. Numerous posts from the 2005 time frame address what it takes.

Lastly I am not sure on this, but I seem to remember some posts going around that say at the diplomat level there is an extra forum for use in bug discussion and serious problem fixing.

As I said, that is all my "suspicions" based on old posts I have read. Contacting Stardock on chat may glean some more information.

Good Hunting,
W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

Money. Lots and lots of money, in the form of unmarked bills, sent anonymously to an undisclosed P.O. box.

The kat has pretty much covered it. FYI, Veterans get no extra privileges. Diplomats get access to the private Galactic Council forums. As there haven't been any new Diplomats since release to my knowledge, all the Diplomats now are those who were involved in the private gamma test just before release. Ambassadors are pretty much the same as Diplomats (all Diplomats at the time of the gamma were promoted to Ambassador).

As an added bonus, the Diplomats/Ambassadors who were in the private gamma test all have their names in the game's credits, and most of them have ships in the campaign that are named after their forum aliases.

Beyond that, there are Governors and Avatars. Governors are forum moderators and non-GC2 stardock employees; Avatars are GC2 devs or other SD employees involved in some way with GC2.