The civlopedia is wrong on a few items. This one of them. Copes doubles science and Newton's adds 50% to libraries and Uni's.
But, yes, for a super science city, 50% of a huge number is a big number. When have a technologinal edge over a foe can mean everything getting a tech even a few turns before another person can mean the difference between getting a vital wonder or getting better units out in the field first.
Duke is right... Civopedia is wrong... and to be more specific, Copernies doubles EVERYTHING. It doubles the raw science, the extra science brought in by the library, university and research lab, and it doubles the extra science brought in by Isaacs, even though isaacs comes after Copernies.
Isaacs has no effect whatsoever on the raw science... try this, it's shocking, if your city has ten raw science and you have no libr/uni/research lab, and no copernies, then you build Isaacs, u see no increase in science whatsoever!! Isaacs only doubles the extra science brought forth by the library, uni and research lab. I had actually posted on this in the German Deity Liga about 18 months back.
A fuller, more detailed post is here:
http://www.civ2liga.de/thread.php?threadid=2383&boardid=9&styleid=6 and reads like this:
Copernie's and Isaac's:
I came upon something that was really quite surprising, especially when considering the way the civ literature describes the benefits of each of these two wonders. I would probably have researched this a long time ago, but until playing a "1 city, no trade" game recently, i was never very interested in these wonders, opting to utilize prolific super trade instead.
Civ literature states that Copernies "increases science output of city by 50%". This would suggest that a city with 10 science before Copernies would have 15 afterwards. But in fact, something no doubt many already know is that Copernies Doubles the science and it becomes 20. Copernies goes further than this. It in fact doubles Everything, including the the benefit brought forth by the library, the uni and the research lab. And what everybody may not already know is that it even doubles the benefit brought forth by Isaac's. (Even though Isaac's comes later in the game, it's benefits are applied before Copernie's and then the Copernies benefit compounds upon them).
Isaacs on the other hand according to the Civ literature "doubles science output of city"... which would make u believe that it does what Copernies actually does, bringing a 10 science city to 20. But not so!
Isaac's only doubles that which the library, university, and research lab add to the base science and doesn't touch the base science or Copernies at all.
The way i tested this was with a city which had 10 science with no library, university or research lab (and no copernies). Then Issac's was introduced, and i ended up with how much total science? Ten! Isaac's does nothing whatsoever to benefit that city at that stage. No benefit is gained until city improvements are built.
If the same city with no city improvements and no Isaac's builds Copernies, it ends up with 20, Double! If u then add Isaac's to that city, guess how much total science you now have? You still have only 20! Isaac's, i say again, adds nothing to the base science or to Copernies.
What Isaac's actually does is doubles the benefit brought forth only by the library, the university and the research lab. In our example of a city with 10 base science, the library adds 5, the uni adds 5 more and the research lab adds 5 more. Now we have 25. Isaac's takes only the 5+5+5=15 and doubles it and now the city has 40 total science, 10+15+15. If u then build Copernies, you double Everything and get 80.
If we go the other way, start with the 3 city improvements, no Isaac's and build Copernies, we would have (10+15)*2=50. Adding Isaac's brings us to 80, but only because Copernies is acting on Isaac's, not the other way around. Isaac's is adding 15, then Copernies doubles that and we have:
[10 (base)+15 (city improvements)]*2 [copernies doubling everything)]
+
[15 (Isaacs benefit) * 2 (Copernies now doubling the isaac's benefit)] = 50+30=80.
Conclusion: The literature on these wonders is worded inaccurately making us believe at a glance that Isaacs is a vastly superior science wonder to Copernies, but in fact, it is the other way around. If you want a super science city, Isaac's is good, but Copernies is Much better.
Attached is the testing ground save conducted inside Kyoto which actually had 20 base science.
