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When CELERY_ALWAYS_EAGER is True, the call to apply_async() is actually replaced with apply(). The result returned is an EagerResult, which already contains the result of your task.
So, yes, setting ALWAYS_EAGER = True disables the entire AsyncResult functionnality. The entire async process is bypassed, and no task is actually sent to the broker, which is why you cannot retrieve the result through an AsyncResult.
Use CELERY_ALWAYS_EAGER = True when you are testing code path which just need a Celery result, and work the same way with an EagerResult or an AsyncResult.
If needed, there is a way to run tests with AsyncResult too, with CELERY_ALWAYS_EAGER = False, but for this, you’ll need to start a worker before calling the task in your test case. The worker will then be able to execute your task, and AsyncResult will work just fine. You can take a look at django-celery-testworker which seems to do just that, although I’ve not tested it.