One alternative that just occured to me is that clicking on a field could immediately select the "highest priority" object there but still display the selection menu. That way, selecting the most common thing you're interested in is one click less, and selecting anything else is the same as before.

I'd like to have some kind of option to always select a creep or building-other-than-road when clicking on a field, so that the "select what you actually meant" menu has to pop up less often. Until then I'd be happy about a change to pop the menu towards the top if it would go past the bottom of the view (for example if i made the console panel very tall).