Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Seth J. Alberty on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 01/24/2014).

Need advice about duplicate content on mysite

I asked a question earlier and realize I didn`t ask it correctly...
 
My situation: I`m building individual pages to sell my map posters and prints, so there will be 50 nearly identical pages for a different state map (50 state satellite image maps, for example).
 
Every page will have a unique main image, unique title & headings & img alt text (in the sense that the name of the state will be different), and "some" unique paragraphs to describe the specific state map.
 
However, much of the information on the page could be identical for all 50 states...for example, a paragraph explaining the techniques used to create the map (since all 50 maps were created with the same techniques).
 
My question is: For these "common" sections of the page content, is it worth my time to go through and mix up adjectives, sentence order, and make other changes to make each of the 50 common paragraphs appear to be unique?
 
My follow-up question is: Would this attempt to make 50 similarly written paragraphs appear unique actually trigger something in the search engine algorithms that would make them think I`m engaging in shady practices to trick them and HURT my rankings?
 
I guess I`m just trying to find a balance as to how unique the pages need to be from each other, and how valuable such uniqueness is to achieving good rankings and traffic.?
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