asynchronous gameplay in multiplayer mode

Hello dear community,
a few friends and I are considering buying A&A online. We like the board game very much, but it’s just not always easy to play together in terms of time. We stumbled upon the online version and just being able to play asynchronously would be a good solution to our problem.
However, the description only mentions that asynchronous play is possible for ranked games. Unfortunately, I can’t find out anywhere whether this asynchronous play is also possible in standard multiplayer with friends.
Can anyone of you tell me whether all players have to be online all the time in normal multiplayer games with friends? If a game mode already has this feature built in, I would find it pretty weird to limit it to just that one mode. The describtion really only mentions this feature in the context of the ranked mode, not a mode with invited friends.

@juliusborisovbeamdog thank you alot! :) We sure will have a lot of fun!
In the next weeks, I probably will dive deep into strategy discussions. :D