What's the best version neutral method for deploying an SQL Database server?

What's the best version neutral method for deploying an SQL Database server?

On my development box, I always run the latest version of SQL Server. I
often deploy databases from my dev box to a live/staging area for review
or testing. I've done this many times and it has always been a painful
process, but I am realizing that I need to find an easier, more reliable
and consistent way of performing this basic operation.
I normally use WebMatrix purely for deployment and it's worked fine, but
I've been having problems getting it to work on my server for some reason.
Consequently, I am seeking an alternative solution.
Creating a SQL dump file would probably work, but it's not an acceptable
solution a database contains images and easily exceeds 2 gigs of data
which would take forever.
The Import/Export utility fails due to issues with incomplete schema
copies, identity inserts and checks. The solutions offered for these
issues has failed to work in my particular case.
The Backup and Restore method also fails due to some strange
incompatibilities between SQL 2008 and 2012. SQL 2008 Management Studio
throws exceptions during the restore process of a 2012 database. It's odd
that this happens, even though I set the compatibility of the database to
version 2008.
I haven't tried the Detaching, copying and reattaching files method, but I
haven't bothered trying since it would probably fail for the same reasons
the backup and restore method did.
Are there other alternatives out there? Also, why is this so unbelievable
hard for a task that is so common and important, especially in this day in
age of 2013? Get real Microsoft!