It should be like after you place one soldier the next one is selected automatically so you don't have to click and select and place 20 soldiers every level.
There are 2 bugs that are messing this game up. 1 is they are sleeping only and not doing projects or anything. This occurred to me twice in Vancouver. The second one is workers are running to the south wall. This happened to me once. I had to restart 3 times. I still am.
Many thanks!